Baking Monday - Chocolate Caramel Streusel Bars

I tried another recipe from this site today. This one sounds good on paper, but was a bit of a crumbly mess. It tasted okay (very sweet!) but definitely needs tweaking.



The recipe called for "chopped nuts, any kind," which I found a bit annoying, because I typically dislike any nuts in baked goods, so therefore have no go to favorite. A specific ingredient would have been better. I went with chopped toasted almonds - blech. I didn't like the texture at all. And since this is the second almond recipe I've been burned on recently, I think from now on I'll stick with almond extract for baking (mmmmm) and save actual almonds for snacking instead.

So, here's something interesting ... I was doing a search on this recipe to try to find a calorie count (more on that Wednesday), I found other versions with slight differences ... but those differences might have made these better, like increasing the brown sugar and baking in a 9x12 instead of 8x8 pan. I'm not likely to try these again, but hey! experimenting is what Baking Monday is all about.