I have been eyeing this recipe since I got Dorie Greenspan’s ‘Baking From My Home to Yours.’ The picture in the book is drool-worthy.  These are delicious, decadent and really easy to make. The secret? Purchased Dulce de Leche.  I love the combination of a crumbly shortbread-y crust, caramel-y duce de leche, nuts (!) and a dark chocolate layer on top.  Oh my god.  Totally heavenly.   My mouth waters just thinking about it. If you bring these to the next office party or family gathering people will definitely sit up and take notice.   I love the fact that you can throw the ingredients for the crust in the cuisinart and whir away until the dough forms then you press in, yes, that’s right press in the crust—no rolling out dough on the countertop and making a mess.  You can even melt the chocolate layer in the microwave.  The one complicated move is to caramelize the nuts—Dorie uses peanuts, but I had mixed nuts in my pantry so I used those instead.    The caramelized nuts add a certain je ne sais quoi to the recipe, but if you are nervous about caramelizing or don’t have time you could just use roasted and salted nuts instead.

Enjoy!  I’m going to have a piece right now…

Snickery Squares

From Dorie Greenspan’s ‘Baking From My Home to Yours’

Crust:

1 cup of flour

¼ cup of sugar

2 Tbsp. confectioners’ sugar

¼ tsp. salt

1 stick (8 Tbsp.) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces and chilled

1 large egg yolk, lightly beaten

Filling

Caramelized Nuts:

1 ½ cups salted, roasted nuts of your choice or a mixture of nuts

1/3 cup sugar

3 Tbsp. water

About 1 ½ cups of store bought dulce de leche (I used a 10oz jar of the Barefoot Contessa’s Espresso Dulce de Leche)

Topping

7 oz of bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (I used Guittard bittersweet chocolate disks and eliminated the chopping.)

½ stick (4 Tbsp.) unsalted butter, cut into pieces, at room temp.

Getting Ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350F.  Butter an 8” square pan and put it on a baking sheet.

The Crust: Toss the flour, sugar, confectioners’ sugar and salt into a food processor and pulse a few times to combine.  Toss in the pieces of cold butter and pulse until the mixture looks like coarse meal.  Pour the yolk over the ingredients and pulse until the dough forms clumps and curds—stop before the dough comes together in a ball.

Turn the dough into the buttered pan and gently press it evenly across the bottom of the pan. Prick the dough all over with a fork and slide the sheet into the oven.

Bake the crust for 15 to 20 minutes, or until it takes on just a little color around the edges. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool to room temperature before filling.

To make the filling:

Have a silicone mat-lined baking sheet at the ready, as well as a long-handled wooden spoon (you’ll be cooking sugar that will climb to over 300F, so you’ll want to keep as far away from it as possible) and a medium heavy bottomed sauce pan.

Put the sugar and water in the saucepan and cook over medium-high heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolves (see picture). Keeping the heat fairly high, continue to cook the sugar, without stirring, until it just starts to color. (If sugar splatters onto the sides of the saucepan, wash down the splatters with a pastry brush dipped in cold water.) Toss in the nuts and immediately start stirring.  Keep stirring to coat the nuts with the sugar.  Within a few minutes, they will be covered with sugar and turn white—keep stirring until the sugar turns back into caramel.  When the nuts are coated with a nice, deep amber caramel, remove the pan from the heat and turn the nuts out onto the baking sheet, using the wooden spoon to spread them out as best you can.  Cool the nuts to room temperature.

When they are cool enough to handle, separate the nuts or break them into small pieces (I chopped mine.)  Divide the nuts in half.  Keep half of the nuts whole or in biggish pieces for the filling and finely chop the other half for the topping.  Spread the dulce de leche over the shortbread base and then sprinkle with the whole candied nuts or the big pieces.

Topping:

Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water or in a microwave oven, using a low power setting. Remove the chocolate from the heat and gently stir in the butter, stirring until it is fully blended into the chocolate.

Pour the chocolate over the dulce de leche, smoothing it with a long metal icing spatula, then sprinkle over the finely chopped candied nuts.  Put the pan into the fridge to set the topping, about 20 minutes; if you’d like to serve the squares cold, (I do!) keep them refrigerated for a least 3 hours before cutting.

Cut into 16 bars, each roughly 2 ½ inches on a side.

Enjoy!