TWD Rewind: Snickery Squares and *BONUS* Dulce de Leche

I know that you read that title and you felt like you hit the Friday jackpot! Two for the price of one! That means half off! Woo hoo! But, I gotta tell you, I had no intention of providing a bonus on this one. No sirree. But, it's fun to have a little extra now and again, so rather than holding out, I give you Snickery Squares and dulce de leche.

Snickers are not my favorite candy bar. I much prefer a Milky Way or a Twix but when those are gone, I will definitely dig on a Snickers. I made these for Dudley because he was (is) visiting and he likes cookies, "with a lot of stuff" in them. He is most definitely NOT a purist when it comes to cookies. And, I was talking to my Aunt Suzy (she's my favorite) the night before he was arriving and our conversation went a little something like this:

(me): Dudley's visiting, yay! But I'm a little bitter because he's in Puerto Rico right now where it's 80 degrees and I'm freezing my tail off here. And it's going to be above freezing when he's here and that's just not fair! He should suffer too.
(Suzy): That's so great. So, did you bake him cookies? Or other treats for his visit?
(me): nope.
(Suzy): Really? You really didn't make him anything? I just really think that's not like you, and wow, you really didn't make him anything?

So, after that conversation I felt a little guilty that I hadn't made him anything. My mom has been known to lecture me about the importance of keeping Dudley well-fed and happy, as has my grandmother, and all of these collective expectations found me in the kitchen, making Snickery Squares for his arrival. In all fairness, I had planned on making him the Snickery Squares, I just hadn't gotten around to it yet. The impetus for making these squares was: 1. they were on the "short list" of rewinds and 2. I had glanced at the recipe and it called for dulce de leche. I was wandering around the ethnic foods section and there was a can of dulce de leche, I grabbed it, threw it in the cart, and my fate was sealed: Snickery Squares for Dudley.

Or so I thought . . .

This is what I really grabbed:Yup, sweetened condensed milk. Freaking a! I didn't even notice until I'd opened it up and I was like, I so thought that dulce de leche was darker than this. And I looked at the label, and sure enough, sweetend condensed milk. So, I have to backtrack and tell you that at this point I was already in for a penny, in for a pound because I'd made the shortbread and the peanuts (and no, I didn't do a very good job with the sugared peanuts but you know what, they tasted ok and so they were fine with me!). So, beyond the fact that I now have an open can of sweetened condensed milk that I need to use, I'm also 75% of the way through these Snickery Squares and I am minus the dulce de leche. But, you can make dulce de leche. So, I googled dulce de leche recipes. And here's the funny part: apparently most of the recipes call for sweetened condensed milk but on that day, the stars were aligned against me because I didn't come across any of those! But, it's pretty simple: milk, sugar, vanilla, and cook the you-know-what out of it. My recipe came courtesy of Alton Brown.

My lonely shortbread, waiting for some sweetness

Dulce de leche:
1 qt milk
1 1/2 c sugar
1 vanilla bean
1/2 tsp baking soda (I have no idea what the purpose of this is. And, if you know, please tell me, I'm really curious)

Combine the milk, sugar, vanilla bean and seeds in a large, 4-quart saucepan and place over medium heat. Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally, until the sugar has dissolved. Once the sugar has dissolved, add the baking soda and stir to combine. Reduce the heat to low and cook uncovered at a bare simmer. Stir occasionally, but do not re-incorporate the foam that appears on the top of the mixture. Continue to cook for 1 hour. Remove the vanilla bean after 1 hour and continue to cook until the mixture is a dark caramel color and has reduced to about 1 cup, approximately 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Strain the mixture through a fine mesh strainer. Store in the refrigerator in a sealed container for up to a month.

Milk, sugar, and vanilla

My vanilla beans stayed in a gross clump -- I don't know what the deal with that was.

And, lovely, right? I bet you just want to dig right in! No, I think it's supposed to do this because you have to strain it at the end of the process.

It took my dulce a lot longer to cook down but I have to say, it tasted amazing the whole way through. I did a lot of tasting. So, finally it was done and I let it cool and then I could finish the Snickery Squares. I just want to note here that Dorie calls for dulce de leche in a couple of different recipes but she doesn't include a recipe in the book (trust me, I looked). In fact, she calls for storebought dulce. It's interesting when a chef of Dorie Greenspan's caliber calls for something storebought rather than homemade and, as I discovered, there's a reason for this: homemade just doesn't cut it sometimes. Even though my dulce was tasty, it never thickened up enough for this recipe and I doubled the time that it cooked. As a result, these squares were never really squares, they had to be eaten with a fork or a spoon. And the dulce de leche just oozed EVERYWHERE!! It was a sticky, sticky mess. By the time I got to the chocolate portion of this recipe I'd pretty much thrown in the towel. I melted the chocolate but forgot to add the butter so my chocolate on top was rock hard.


The verdict: Dudley liked these but he said that they were "really rich." I guess even he has his limits. I thought that the dulce de leche was waaaay too sweet. I could only eat a little bit of them and I think that by then I was just over the Snickery Squares. My favorite part was actually the shortbread crust and I think that I'd like to make it again with strawberries or some sort of fruit. It was really good and I actually ended up scraping everything else off and eating the crust plain. And for me, that is a really strange thing to do.