Here is the recipe.
I used three other recipes within this one, for caramel sauce, yellow cake mix, and chocolate frosting.
Final Product:
This recipe seemed easy on paper, but it irked me it called for pre-made supplies like "a box of yellow cake mix." I mean, the point (for me) of doing this is to try baking things myself, and it's not all that hard to make a cake from scratch. It was the same way for two other ingredients, it wanted a "jar of caramel topping" and a "can of chocolate frosting." So I looked up recipes for these things and made them on my own to add to the recipe, the downside being it skewed with the quantities a bit (I wasn't sure how many oz a "jar" was). It ended with me having to tweak a few things, but it all came out ok, though it made the recipe much more involved. It didn't help I was simultaneously making turkey meatballs and sauce from our America's test kitchen cookbook, which were also super involved, like, grinding up mushrooms and anchovies for flavor, etc. (They turned out very tasty too, though some meatballs fell a little apart.)
The caramel recipe was a bit small, so I doubled it, which was my big fail of the baking adventure (and I had to say a mournful farewell to two cups of delicious sugar that I turned into a solid clump in the pot, and begin again). Issue was that the pot I used was too small, so the water boiled off before the sugar caramelized. I got a bigger pot, and the caramel turned out the second time around. Probably due to ratios, I had to add a bit more cornstarch and peanut butter to my caramel to make it a little less liquidy, but the taste came out fine.
When I used my homemade yellow cake mix in the recipe, it said to mix with the egg and butter until no longer crumbly, but no matter how long I mixed it, it stayed crumbly. So I added a little water, it un-crumbled, and appeared to bake up ok. Maybe it's because I was missing all the extra preservatives that are in the box mix.
Anyway, the frosting was simple enough and turned out great, but the batch was WAY bigger than a can, so overall I think the bars had too much frosting on them (even though the frosting was VERY tasty). As they came out, the frosting kind of overwhelmed everything else, but when I chopped off the top half of frosting and left some behind, it tasted much more peanut-y and less like a solid bar of chocolate frosting with maybe something else in there.
Husband's reaction was "not bad," which is high praise from him, I think. When I said there was too much frosting, he said "I like frosting." His only complaint was it was "messy." So...🤷 These are pretty rich so should make it in to work with him next week, I don't think I'd survive eating all of them over the weekend, but we'll see how it goes.
I used three other recipes within this one, for caramel sauce, yellow cake mix, and chocolate frosting.
Final Product:
This recipe seemed easy on paper, but it irked me it called for pre-made supplies like "a box of yellow cake mix." I mean, the point (for me) of doing this is to try baking things myself, and it's not all that hard to make a cake from scratch. It was the same way for two other ingredients, it wanted a "jar of caramel topping" and a "can of chocolate frosting." So I looked up recipes for these things and made them on my own to add to the recipe, the downside being it skewed with the quantities a bit (I wasn't sure how many oz a "jar" was). It ended with me having to tweak a few things, but it all came out ok, though it made the recipe much more involved. It didn't help I was simultaneously making turkey meatballs and sauce from our America's test kitchen cookbook, which were also super involved, like, grinding up mushrooms and anchovies for flavor, etc. (They turned out very tasty too, though some meatballs fell a little apart.)
The caramel recipe was a bit small, so I doubled it, which was my big fail of the baking adventure (and I had to say a mournful farewell to two cups of delicious sugar that I turned into a solid clump in the pot, and begin again). Issue was that the pot I used was too small, so the water boiled off before the sugar caramelized. I got a bigger pot, and the caramel turned out the second time around. Probably due to ratios, I had to add a bit more cornstarch and peanut butter to my caramel to make it a little less liquidy, but the taste came out fine.
When I used my homemade yellow cake mix in the recipe, it said to mix with the egg and butter until no longer crumbly, but no matter how long I mixed it, it stayed crumbly. So I added a little water, it un-crumbled, and appeared to bake up ok. Maybe it's because I was missing all the extra preservatives that are in the box mix.
Anyway, the frosting was simple enough and turned out great, but the batch was WAY bigger than a can, so overall I think the bars had too much frosting on them (even though the frosting was VERY tasty). As they came out, the frosting kind of overwhelmed everything else, but when I chopped off the top half of frosting and left some behind, it tasted much more peanut-y and less like a solid bar of chocolate frosting with maybe something else in there.
Husband's reaction was "not bad," which is high praise from him, I think. When I said there was too much frosting, he said "I like frosting." His only complaint was it was "messy." So...🤷 These are pretty rich so should make it in to work with him next week, I don't think I'd survive eating all of them over the weekend, but we'll see how it goes.
Cake mix dry ingredients. The yellow powder is dehydrated milk, and I had to use some vanilla powder (the brown powder towards the top)
Adding egg and butter
The mix that did not un-crumble
The mix with a bit of water.
Adding the chopped Reeses (I did not eat a single Reeses cup during this process, and was proud of myself).
Cake layer in the pan.
Making the caramel: boil water and sugar until sugar starts to turn clear. I kind of wish I had taken a picture of my failed one, it was pretty amusingly bad.
Boil until sugar begins to brown, then add cream.
Adding butter after the cream.
Final caramel.
Adding PB and cornstarch to caramel.
Baked caramel layer, front and side view.
Making the frosting. It's super easy, it's just butter, cocoa powder, and a LOT of confectioners sugar (5 cups!!), then some milk to get the texture right.
Finished frosting--I added a bit more milk than the recipe called for, because I wanted a smoother frosting.
Frosting layer.
Finished product from the front and side. From the side, it didn't LOOK like the frosting was that thick, but when cut into, the frosting layer is HUGE.
Bar cross section.
Bar minus about an inch of frosting--much tastier!
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