Ritz Cracker and Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars
Stay with me here before you think I’ve lost the plot. Ritz crackers and chocolate you say? Well my cookie bar recipe today pays homage to a new Dairy Milk variety which I have fallen in love with. It’s chocolate embedded with tiny Ritz biscuits and it tastes delicious. I may have mentioned before my love of salty and sweet things, so this works on all levels for me.
I do love cookies but I have never quite mastered getting them to be chewy and fat rather than thin and crispy, so for me, the cookie bar is the way forward. This recipe has more of a brownie/blondie like quality, and is dense and fudgy but still with a cookie like quality. They have already been taste approved by the panel (George, my nephews and their friends) and given the thumbs up. I hope you agree and don’t think I’m having some sort of funny turn.
I have tried a couple of cookie bar recipes, this is a good one and is based on an American classic Toll House Cookie recipe, with a few Lucy Loves changes. As you can see I have included my favourite Stork, as its so light, doesn’t need softening and its quite a bit cheaper than butter. Sometimes I wince at the amount I spend on butter in a week.
Line a 10 x15 inch (I can’t work out what that is in centimetres) baking tin with greaseproof paper and pop your oven on to 170 degrees, thats fan assisted. Add the Stork/soft butter to your stand mixer or bowl and then pop in the caster and soft brown sugars.
Cream them together until lighter in colour, then add the eggs one at a time with a slug of vanilla extract.
Weigh out the plain flour and add salt and bicarb of soda. Turn the mixer onto low and add this flour, and gently fold through.
And now for the tasty additions. Weigh out about 100g (half a box) of Ritz crackers, eat a couple of handfuls and then weigh out some more. You will have forgotten how tasty Ritz crackers are, and they really are. For the chocolate I used Dairy Milk Giant Buttons, as yes, they were on offer. You could definitely use any chocolate you wanted, chopped or buttons, but I wanted to stay loyal to the Dairy Milk homage.
Take the crackers and crumble them into salty chunks and crumbs, straight into your cookie mixture. Then take the whole bag of buttons and break them into the mixture too. Do please feel free to quality control the mixture here, I did quite a bit of quality controlling and it ended up being my lunch. It tastes almost as good raw as it does cooked. *usual dull warning about the mixture containing raw egg blah blah, etc*.
Old lady hands, aagghhh.
Give the mixture a good stir, presuming there is some actually left in the bowl. Then spread into your lined tray, smoothing where necessary. Using Stork gives a softer dough, butter will give you more of a standard cookie dough consistency, so spreadability will vary (ooh science).
Pop into your pre heated oven for 25 minutes, although keep an eye on it as you don’t want to over cook these delicious salty sweet offerings.
Once they are cooked, leave to cool in the tin then gently lift out and cut into generous squares.
Oh no there seems to be a piece missing, how bizarre.
These are so tasty warm, cold or even after a couple of days in a tin. The chunks of chocolate and salty crackers go so well in the soft dough, I can assure you I have not lost my baking marbles. Let me know what you think.
Lucy x
Ritz Cracker and Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars
Line a 10 x 15 inch baking tray and pre heat the oven to 170 degrees fan assisted
These quantities are adapted from American Cup measurements
225g Stork or soft butter
170g caster sugar
150g soft brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
275g plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon salt
100g Ritz Crackers
155g bag of Giant Chocolate Buttons or the equivalent in any chopped chocolate
Line your tin and pre heat your oven to 170 degrees. Cream the Stork or soft butter with both caster and brown sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer or with a bowl and wooden spoon or with hand beaters. When they are lighter in colour and well mixed, add the vanilla extract then mix in both eggs, one at a time until well blended.
Weigh the flour, add the salt and bicarbonate of soda and gently mix into the butter, egg and sugar mixture. Crumble the Ritz crackers into the mixture then fold in these and the chocolate. Spread the mixture into the baking tin and bake for around 25 minutes, checking after 20 so it remains soft in the middle and not overcooked.
Leave to cool in the tin and then remove and cut into generous squares. Keep in a jar or tin.
Leave a Reply