Christmas bars with salted caramel

I was brought up to always consume seasonal food and it’s still in my blood. When I see something in the store or at home that’s in season, I immediately get the urge to conjure it up. And like after every St. Nicholas Day at home, I had a lot of peanuts popping out at me that I just had to come up with a tasty use for. These cuts are violently addictive, the taste of caramel and chocolate on a delicious buttery dough, the peanut chunks to go with it, just great goodness. And since it’s a one-pan recipe, you get a large amount in a short amount of time without much work.

Ingredients dough:

• 300g plain flour
• ½ baking powder
• 150g granulated sugar
• 1 vanilla sugar
• 150g butter
• 3 eggs

Other Ingredients:

• 4 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 125 g butter
• 100ml whipped cream
• 200g peanuts (if using fresh, add 0.5 tbsp sea salt) Alternatively, you can choose salted peanuts
• 200g of cooking chocolate

Preparing:

• Beat the eggs with the sugar until foamy. Add the flour, butter and baking powder and work into a smooth dough that is still slightly runny. Spread it on a smaller baking tray, roughly 22×33 cm, lined with baking paper.
• Leave to bake at 180°C until golden (approx. 15-20min).
• In a saucepan, heat the cream and butter until the butter is melted.
• Put the sugar in the other pot and let it caramelise while heating and stirring occasionally. It is important not to stir the sugar with a spoon, but only by swirling the pot. Also, never leave the caramel unattended, the change of sugar to liquid is constant over a few seconds and you need to be ready to remove it from the stove immediately otherwise it tends to burn quickly.
• Once the sugar has turned to a brownish liquid, add the hot whipped cream and butter and stir until the items are combined. Feel free to use a whisk to stir this time.
• Meanwhile, shell your peanuts and chop them into smaller pieces. If you don’t have fresh peanuts, you can also use salted shelled peanuts, but then don’t salt the caramel.
• Add the peanuts, salt and stir into the finished caramel. Spread the mixture over the dough. It is a good idea to place a pastry hoop around the dough to prevent the caramel from oozing out. Leave to cool.
• Heat the cooking chocolate over steam and pour the liquid chocolate over the hardened caramel. If you want, you can still put a few pieces of peanuts on top of each bar and let it harden like that.
• Let cool and just cut into smaller pieces and enjoy.