I have my staples to make and give at Christmas. Peppermint Bark; Brown Sugar, Cinnamon, Spicy Nuts and Christmas Crack. The Bark I have been making for over 20 years and I now wait until after Christmas, buy all the clearance candy canes and make it for Valentines Day. The nuts can be expensive and I have to be careful with so many having nut allergies. But the Crack! – Everybody loves Crack … crunchy, salty, toffee, chocolate. It’s addicting! Hence the name
The best part about this is it is also so incredibly easy to make.
Ingredients
1 sleeve saltine crackers (salted) or how many you can fit on your pan
2 sticks butter (your choice of salted or unsalted – whatever you have)
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tsp. cream
2 cups semi sweet chocolate chips
Optional – Flaky sea salt, nuts, crumbled up saltines, or toffee bits
Preheat oven to 350°, line a baking sheet (jelly roll pan) neatly, with saltine crackers, salted sided up. In a small sauce pan over medium to med high heat, melt butter and brown sugar together while whisking until smooth. Allow it to come to a boil and immediately bring down to a simmer, stir in vanilla and cream. Keep at a simmer for about 3-5 minutes.
Pour toffee over saltines and place in oven for about 8 minutes. Toffee will be very bubbly.
Take out of oven and sprinkle evenly with the chocolate chips, allowing them to melt some. Use an offset icing spatula to spread the chocolate evenly over the toffee and saltines. Sprinkle with flaky sea salt.
Place in fridge to set. I cut mine in squares, but it can easily just be broken into pieces.
*I have lined my pans with foil or parchment paper, but inevitably some of the toffee seeped onto my pan. The first time it happened I panicked thinking it would be a bitch to clean – it wasn’t. Neither is the saucepan. This time I didn’t use anything at all and clean up was a breeze. However, if you want to break it into pieces, having the foil or parchment paper there as a sling, would help to remove the entire bark onto a cutting board. Also note, do NOT dip your finger into the toffee to taste it, the sugar is intensely hot and you will get a burn. Take it from the one who tried this a few years ago.
I made 4 batches tonight, it comes together so quickly the only thing that slowed me down was waiting for them to set, which literally was twice as long as actually making the toffee and the crack.
The addition of the cream makes the toffee a little softer, like caramel, so if you’d rather it have more of a “crack” when breaking into pieces omit that.
Jersey Jules 