Author Notes
Yummy Yummy!!! If you want a candy-like graham cracker crust covered with a sugary crispy caramel coating (also known as toffee) that is “fortified” LOL with a coating of dark chocolate and then covered with dried cranberries, walnuts and a few sprinkles of big flakes of sea salt, this delightful, addictive sugary “crack” is for you. You can also place pieces of the brickle in a nice tin between layers of wax paper and give them as gifts. Author of this recipe is Carrie Vaslos Mullins who is the editor of “Serious Eats: Sweets” @ seriouseats.com. She calls it dark chocolate cranbery walnut brickle. I have slightly modified the recipe by changing amount of graham crackers asked for in recipe, adding vanilla extract and orange (or tangerine) zest, and doubling the amount of dried cranberries. —Regine
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Ingredients
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11
Sleeves of Graham Crackers (each sleeve has 4 small crackers)
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2
Sticks (8 oz or 16 tbsp) unsalted butter
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1/4 cup
White sugar
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3/4 cup
Light brown sugar
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2 cups
or 10 oz dark chocolate (i.e. Toll House Nestle Dark Chocolate Morsels)
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1 cup
Dried Cranberries (or replace with cherries, raisins...)
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1/2 cup
Chopped Walnuts (or replace with pecans, almonds, hazelnuts...)
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1/2 teaspoon
Big flakes of sea salt (or fleur de sel if you can find it)
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1/4 teaspoon
Pure vanilla extract
Directions
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Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat oven to 350°F. Line a 10x15 baking sheet with aluminum foil, then cover foil with a piece of parchment paper to fit. Align the crackers side by side in a way that the entire baking sheet is covered with them. I counted about 11 sleeves of graham cracker; and each sleeve has 4 small crackers. You can refer to one of the pictures that I have uploaded to see how I arranged them. A 15x10 baking sheet will hold exactly 11 sleeves (44 small crackers).
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In a saucepan over medium heat, combine butter, sugar, and brown sugar. Stir occasionally until butter is melted, letting come to a boil. Let it boil five minutes, stirring constantly. Take out of heat and and stir vanilla; then immediately pour caramel mixture over graham crackers to coat. You may have to use an offset spatula or knife, if this is what you have, in order to evenly spread caramel over entire surface of graham crackers base.
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Place in oven and bake for 12 minutes. Remove from the oven and immediately top it with the chocolate morsels. Let stand 5 minutes to allow them to melt a bit and then use an offset spatula or knife to more evenly spread the chocolate across the brickle. Scatter the cranberries,walnuts and salt evenly over the surface. You may want to try to carefully and gently press as many cranberries as you can into the dark chocolate. I somehow think that if you do that, you may have less cranberries that tend to fall off the brickle as you attempt to break it into small individual pieces.
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Let stand until completely cool and set, about 2 hours; but you can too, like me, place in refrigerator to hasten the cooling period. Store brickle between layers of wax paper in an airtight container in a cool, dry place, or in the fridge.
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Note: You may choose to use dark chocolate bars that are less sweet than the chips or morsels found in baking aisle; in this case break them into several small pieces so that you can more easily scatter them all over the graham cracker base.
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