Numbers are Hard

oatmeal, caramel, oatmeal -- what could be better?

I am obsessed with a new blog called I am Baker. This woman has an awesome assortment of delicious baked goods which are all decorated beautifully; she’s my amateur baking idol. One treat in particular caught my eye: an oatmeal brownie bar stuffed with caramel, inspired by Martha Stewart. I got hungry looking at it and decided that I was willing to run on the treadmill for an extra 45 minutes to have one of these bad boys. Without wasting any time, I head to the store at 9:30 PM to collect the ingredients and returned with a pint of heavy cream and 6 Milky Way bars.

Let me interject here with the theme of this post – things that are difficult. There are a few things I’m not the greatest at (typing, air traffic control, balancing my checkbook) but I was pretty sure I mastered numbers in kindergarten after I got my “counting to 100 certificate”. Apparently, this is a skill I need to work on because the recipe only called for 2 Milky Way bars and somehow I brought home 6. Did I accidentally multiply by 3? divide by 2 and add 5? Take the square root to the second power and multiply by the second composite number in the sequence? Hard to say, but let’s hope Milky Ways bars have a long shelf life, because I have way too many. 

Fail

Also among things that are hard – reading directions. Another fun fact that I discovered upon returning home with 4 too many Milky Way bars was that I also needed 47 squares of caramel. Really? By now it’s 10:00 and I’m not going to venture back out to the Food Emporium to correct my inability to count or follow directions. I’ll just make it work with some homemade caramel.

Making homemade caramel is actually pretty easy, all that it requires is some heavy cream, butter, brown sugar and corn syrup. The only tip is you want to make sure to use large pot, because the mixture triples when it starts boiling. Combine all of the ingredients over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until it reaches a boil. From there, you just let everything hang out until it reaches 230 degrees F. 

Needless to say, I don’t have a candy thermometer (I don’t even have a people thermometer to tell if I have a fever, so I’ll probably invest in one of those first). A few tips to tell if your caramel has reached it caramel-ness is the color (notice how it changes from a blonde, to a dirty blonde, to a nice golden brown color). 

 

Also, once you think the caramel is ready to go, take a fork and drizzle a little into a cup of cold water. If it can form a soft ball, you’re in business.

So with that mixture ready, it’s time to add the 2 chosen Milky Way bars. This is where you also want to add some cream so the ingredients combine together. Once that’s done, let the mixture cool down for 5 or 10 minutes. 

 

Meanwhile, make the top and bottom layers. The I am Baker recipe suggests mixing in some brownie mix, but I was in a classic mood, so I stayed true to the Midwestern oat-bar and left it unadulterated. After pressing ½ of the mixture into a greased dish, I poured the caramel/Milky Way concoction on top and save the remaining crumble to cover everything. 

Then you pop it in the over for 30 long minutes and end up with something that looks like this:

Not exactly Maratha Stewart quality, but it tastes damn good. I think next time I will just make the caramel from scratch and scatter a cup of chocolate chips on top because the Milky Way bars didn’t really add a chocolaty taste to it. Any way you want to make it (as a brownie, or with any combination of chocolate and caramel) this is a very easy, delicious recipe. And if you’re lucky enough to have basic math problems like me, you might end up with a couple extra Milky Way bars.