Life Lesson:  Learn from crap and move on.
I don't enjoy staying angry/upset/depressed for long.  It's... well, depressing (huh?).  Glean what you can learn from a bad situation and move forward, look ahead.  And that, my peeps, is exactly what I did.
Feeling completely shattered by my failed cake - seriously though, isn't that just a little unbalanced of me.  Don't you think? - I decided that what was needed was to wash that cake right out of my hair.
Cue 'New Project'.
I have a list in my bookmarks bar called 'Must Try It'.  All the recipes that I see on sites that I know I want to make but am not going to make them in the immediate future go to this bookmark.  The list is long and takes in just about anything you could imagine.  I'm figuring that soon I'll have to divide it up.  You know, 'Sweets I Must Try', 'Greens I Must Try', 'Cass. I Must Try'... you get it.  I'm going to need a bigger bookmarks bar.  One of the most recent items to hit the 'Must Try' bar though are these puppies... I need a long weekend for that though.  I'm thinking that my next long one will be Easter and that might just be the perfect time... if I can wait that long.
So, long story short... these were sitting in my 'Must Try' just waiting for the appropriate time.  That time, and I knew it would come, when decadence and over-indulgence were the tone of the day.  A time when the combination of shortbread, caramel and dark chocolate would lick my wounds for me and soothe me into comforting happy land again.  A time when simmering, bubbling, multi-stepped recipes would be just the thing to restore addled nerves.


That day my friends, arrived yesterday.  I find it absolutely soothing to bake or chop veggies or nurse something cooking on the stove.  It's like therapy.  I can stand for a few minutes, chopping, mixing, stirring, pouring and at the end of it I've got something we can all enjoy.  It's like running and Yoga... it clears my head.
So, after the cheapest therapy session ever and with a very clear head (won't last long), here are the bars that have restored my equilibrium again.  Thank you 'Not Without Salt' and thank you dark chocolate (fairly traded of course) and caramel.  Big Sigh.


Homemade Twix Bars (adapted from 'Not Without Salt' - p.s. she has really nice pictures)

Shortbread:
2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
pinch of salt
2 tbsp of crushed rice crispies cereal (yeah, seriously - my addition, Ashley uses actual rice that she whizzes, also an option for 'ya)
1/2 cup + 3 tbsp unsalted butter at room temperature

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Prepare a 9x13 inch baking pan by spraying it OR lining it with parchment (or aluminum foil) and using a little butter to grease the paper.
Mix the flour, sugar, salt, crushed rice (crispies) together in a bowl.  Add the butter and cut it together.  You can use a pastry cutter or two knives.  Cut the mixture until it forms a crumb like texture.
Pour the crumbs into the baking pan and press into the pan until it's packed on the bottom.
Bake for 12 min.  Turn the pan in the oven and bake for another 10 or so.  Until the crust is golden at the edges.
Remove from oven and cool (you can turn off the oven now)


Caramel:
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup Lyle's Golden Syrup
1 tsp fresh lemon juice (I didn't have any lemon so I had to leave this out)
1 cup whipping cream
1 cup sweetened condensed milk
1/4 tsp salt (plus more for sprinkling)

Combine the sugar, water and Golden syrup in a heavy bottomed saucepan.  Heat together and let it come to a boil.  Do not stir it any more.


Using a candy thermometer, continue to boil the mixture until it reaches 300 degrees F.  Remove from heat and let it sit for a minute, until it stops bubbling.
Carefully add in the cream (this will cause a huge bubbling up to happen again), whisk it together well and then add in the sweetened condensed milk.  Whisk and return to heat.  Might want to turn the heat down a bit now because this can burn easily (yup that means I burned it a little bit) and continue whisking gently.  Add the salt.  Let this mixture come up to 240 degrees F.  Remove from the heat and pour over the shortbread.  Sprinkle a little more salt over the caramel layer.


Let this set for at least two hours.



Chocolate:
6 oz. dark chocolate
3 tbsp unsalted butter

Melt chocolate and butter together over simmering water (could microwave if you wanted).  Once melted together.  Pour over the set caramel.  Spread evenly.  Let this set.  You might want to refridgerate it for a while as well.


Cut the bars once everything has set.  Cutting works well if they are cold.  You might want to wipe off the knife in between cutting or even butter the knife a little bit.