Taking Snickers to the Next Level

Each, delicious on its own. But can you imagine what it’d be like when they all came together, layered one on top of another on top of another on top of another? You cannot. Even if you know the distinct taste of each of them, you cannot. Because what you’re going to taste when you bite into a bar of this layered goodness, is going to beat the sum of the parts. Like me, you will be left wondering why you didn’t double the recipe.

But you are lucky. You’ve already been warned.

Every now and then, I sit down and thumb through my cookbooks. Gawk at the beautiful photos, stick post-it notes, leave bookmarks between pages, and diligently note down in my planner the recipes I’m going to try that month. This recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s book (my baking bible) is one such recipe.

While the original recipe calls for peanuts, I used cashews because I like them a lot more. I also toasted them a little before caramelizing, to have a well-rounded, nutty flavour coming through. It’s important to use chocolate with high cacao content so that it balances the sugary sweet dulce de leche.

Want to still take it up a notch? Serve it with homemade vanilla ice cream.

1. Butter an 8 inch square pan and preheat the oven to 350F/175C.
2. To make the shortcrust: mix all the dry ingredients of the shortcrust together, then add in the pieces of cold butter and combine together until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs. Pour the yolk over the mixture and bring the dough together, until it clumps to form a ball.
3. Press the dough into the baking pan and prick the dough with a fork. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until slightly golden on the edges. Let it cool completely before filling.
4. For the filling: Have a baking tray lined with parchment or a silpat ready on the side. In a saucepan, heat the sugar and water together until the sugar dissolves and begins to colour slightly. Toss the cashews and keep stirring to coat the nuts. Once it’s an amber colour, turn it out on the silpat and spread it to single layer. Cool the nuts to room temperature, and then break it up to smaller pieces for the filling. Keep some for sprinkling on the finished squares (but my dad gobbled them all down thinking they were leftovers). Once cool mix together the dulce de leche with the candied nuts and spread on the cooled shortbread.
5. For the chocolate topping: Melt the chocolate and butter together and pour it over the dulce de leche filling. Smoothen with a spatula. Refrigerate for 3 hours before slicing. It’s hard, but you gotta do it for those perfect squares.
6. At the end of the long three hour wait, cut it into 16 squares and wolf down.