Chewy caramel oatmeal crumbles

There’s no other word for it, these are awesome! These lovely chewy, gooey, chocolaty, caramel-rich squares are thanks to a baking disaster (as I think a lot of great food discoveries are down the years!) A friend was trying to make a caramel blondie brownie and the result wasn’t quite what she’d expected, but they had this wonderful crumble topping which I have stolen shamelessly for this recipe. It gives these crumbles an added dimension which makes this my favourite indulgent treat! You might also like to try, if you share my lack of willpower, to eat a large spoon of the crumble a few minutes after it comes out of the oven.  Just take a little corner and no one will ever notice! It’s the most amazing chocolate-oat-caramel pudding you’ll ever taste. Then leave it for 30 minutes and you have these dense and rich chewy bars!

Ingredients

• 8 ounces / 230g plain flour
• 7½ ounces / 210g porridge oats
• 9 ounces / 260g light brown soft sugar
• 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
• ¼ teaspoon of salt
• 8¼ ounces / 235g unsalted butter
• 2¾ fluid ounces / 80ml double cream
• 12 ounces / 340g milk chocolate chips
• 5 ounces / 140g dark chocolate chips
• 14 ounces / 400g fudge
• 3½ ounces / 100g milk chocolate to serve

Method

Pre heat the oven to 350°F / 180°C (320°F / 160°C fan).  Line a 13×9.5 inch baking tray with greaseproof paper.

Mix the flour, oats, sugar, bicarbonate of soda and salt in a bowl.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan before pouring into the dry ingredients and combine well until you have a crumbly dough mixture (see Tips below).

Heat the double cream and the fudge in a small pan until you have a thick caramel sauce.

Put a layer of 2/3 of the dough mixture into the lined baking tray and press it down so it is packed tightly in the bottom of the tin.

Sprinkle the chocolate chips over the mixture in the tin and then pour the caramel sauce over the top of this.

Sprinkle the remaining dough mixture over the top by crumbling it in your hand so that it forms an even topping.

Cook in the oven for 27 minutes before removing to cool completely.  Or after you’d enjoyed a sneaky spoonful or two!

Once cool, cut into bars (they’re very rich) melt the remaining chocolate and drizzle over the top.

Thank me later.

Tips

When combining the crumbly dough, I find it easier to finish this by hand wearing latex gloves.

Trivia

Both the USA and Scotland claim to have invented fudge, although the Scottish claim is stronger. The household books of the Scottish songwriter Lady Grizel Baillie (1665 – 1746) make reference to tablet, a medium-hard confectionary similar to fudge but with a more brittle, grainy texture, made with sugar, condensed milk, and butter. American-style fudge (containing chocolate) is found in a letter written by Emelyn Battersby Hartridge, a student at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1888. She says that the cousin of one of her fellow students was making fudge in Baltimore, selling it at 40 cents a pound. Emelyn obtained the recipe and made 30 pounds of fudge for the Vasser College Senior auction that year. It eventually spread in slightly different forms to other colleges, some of which still retain their particular recipes.