How to Make Chocolate Almond Toffee Bars! | Live w/ Anna Olson

Now I would love to introduce the recipe I'm making today because this is a perfect fall easy bake. It's my chocolate almond toffee bars. Now these are a bit of a twist on a Hello Dolly. Have you ever had a Hello Dolly? It's this unctuous decadent square layered with chocolate, nuts, typically coconut and then what binds it all together is sweetened condensed milk. So I did point out that it's a decadent recipe. I've changed up some of the layers in this toffee bar to really just appeal to I think that that fall flavor combining toffee with almonds and then of course a little bit of chocolate. What I love as I said if you have never baked before in your life you are going to love this recipe. It is super easy because all you need is your nine inch even an eight inch baking pan and a bowl to stir your base for the Hello Dollies and that is it. And what I also love about this recipe is you can make it ahead and it stores for days and days and days because there are no volatile ingredients in it. So let me get right to the crust here and I see comments coming in so this is a good sign that our streaming is working okay. I'm starting out with some rolled oats and you'll see as usual the full recipe is right below the window here and if you've seen my recipes before you know I like to bake with regular rolled oats as opposed to quick cook or instant. The difference between them is regular rolled oats all have been steamed and flattened giving them this shape. The difference is the instant oats have been steamed and flattened a whole lot more and sometimes you'll find they're broken in pieces. Quick cook have been steamed a little bit less than the instant and the regular have been steamed and pressed the least amount so which is why they retain their shape and have slightly higher fiber but really what I like is you've got that toothiness to the oats which really contribute to this square. And for just a hint of sweetness without adding sugar itself I'm actually adding graham cracker crumbs to this recipe. Just half a cup not that many. Graham crackers aren't that sweet and if you don't have access to graham crackers well digestive biscuits crushed up or pulsed in the food processor would do the same thing. If you wanted to you can add a pinch of cinnamon here it is a sweet square definitely so I do add just a little bit of salt I've got flake salt that I've just crushed between my fingers and then once you've given that just a quick little stir you add your melted butter so this is 115 grams or half of a cup and I just stir that just to coat the crumbs you won't see any real difference when you combine these there's no dough made or texture change you just want to make sure the oats and the crumbs are evenly coated with the butter. Oh we've got a comment about glitching so don't worry a perfectly good video is going to go up on the site I'm going to just keep carry on as they say here. I've got my nine inch square pan that I greased and lined with parchment paper so that the paper comes up the sides that way it's easy because once you chill this bar it becomes really well set and then it's easier to pull out the whole square before you cut it. In goes the crust into the bottom like so. I hope everybody's in a baking spirit these days because as soon as I'm in southern Ontario in Canada as soon as the weather cools off oh I get that baking groove on big time I mean I bake on a regular basis of course and you're watching because you do too but there's something about that cool weather that just invites you to turn on the oven and with these chocolate almond toffee bars they really do hit the spot. Now you want to preheat your oven to 350 before you bake these just as a note. Alright so I've pressed this in but you don't have to press too too firmly and now I did warn you this was a very simple easy recipe so this is great to get us off back into the live stream season I'm already thinking about the holiday recipes that I plan on sharing with you. Okay now to layer in the ingredients I start with my toffee bits so these are score toffee bits they are crunchy hard toffee if you have access to butter crunch toffee and even if you buy chocolate covered hard toffee that will work too you just want to pulse it in the food processor to grind it up because we're adding chocolate to this anyhow so that's only half a cup so really not that much and you want to just loosely spread it to cover that base and what's nice is as this bakes and the toffee bits absorb some of the condensed milk they soften up a little bit so while these are crunchy now when they're chilled and inside the bar they're very soft and palatable. Okay next layer some chocolate chips I'm using dark chocolate chips just to counterbalance the sweetness of the bar overall. A while back I used to own two bakeries and we used to have these on the menu and let me tell you they were a constant sellout. Bars and squares were so popular because they were so portable and easy to take away. My last layer a hundred grams or half a cup of sliced almonds but now you've got the idea you've got something that melts like the chocolate you've got a nut that goes on top you've got the toffee underneath so you can really take this recipe and customize it keep the volumes and proportions the same if you want to go back to more of an original Hello Dolly and replace the toffee bits with sweetened flaked coconut do that 100% if you want to switch up the chocolate flavor you can do peanut butter chips or milk chocolate or if you're white chocolate fan that would work well and in terms of replacing the nuts now I've just posed myself a question that you might be asking what can you use in place of the nuts I think crushed pretzel pieces would work brilliantly and I leave it up to you if you want to use salted or unsalted personally I would go for the salted and then to bind this all together no eggs no batter nothing but a tin of sweetened condensed milk and so that gets poured on top and you're sort of looking for even coverage but you don't have to worry about it too too much because as the squares bake everything starts melting together so you don't have to worry about trying to push the condensed milk into the corners or edges here because it will as soon as it hits the heat of the oven just spread itself out and fill in all those beautiful gaps and of course I've just touched sweetened condensed milk which is immensely sticky let me just wipe off my fingers and that's it honestly that is it for the assembly this is I don't know if you're already thinking about adding to your holiday cookie tin this is one of those great make-aheads it holds well it holds well I store these chilled most of the time but at room temperature they've got such a great texture and these take 30 minutes to bake and what I look for when they're baking is a little bubbling around the outside edges and a nice light golden brown of the almonds on top and because of the condensed milk you get a gorgeous shine so now that I've told you all about this I think you want to see it let me pop these in the oven and after coming out of the oven you want to let your chocolate almond toffee bars cool in the pan and then you chill them in the pan so cool them for about an hour on the counter and then I find I do specify in the recipe you want to give them a good four hours to set that way you get a nice clean cut and as you can see here and Michael can zoom in on that when you cut them they cut so cleanly without any crumbling you get a gorgeous shine on top and you can really see those distinct layers between the oat layer the toffee the chocolate and the almonds on top and I'll cut some more just so you see how they're not difficult to cut they're not too hard or tough sometimes some of these bars coming out of the fridge can be a real challenge to cut and they crack and crumble well these definitely don't and I don't know how you are do you like the end pieces they get a little over caramelized or you trim those off because you want every piece to look like a centerpiece I will leave that part up to you but don't throw away those end pieces because someone's going to snack on them or you can cut them into pieces and if you've got vanilla ice cream stir them into ice cream oh for a chocolate almond toffee ice cream that is absolutely fantastic how long have I been making these squares Michael 15 years at least probably 20 years that I've been making these bars and they don't go out of style you can't beat a good classic like this I'm just gonna jump right in mm-hmm it's the toffee bits that melt in and they sort of sweeten the base but balance with the bitterness of the chocolate on top you've got the crunch of nuts on top this is kind of in that world of candy bar which with Halloween around the corner is lots and lots of fun to consider add this to your not to hand out to the kids but if you're having it a little get-together this is a fun one to add as I said these will keep for days and days even I would keep these up to two weeks in the fridge they freeze well too if you're starting to plan your make ahead schedule for holiday baking I can't believe I'm talking about holiday baking but we do like to plan ahead anyhow an easy recipe I know you're going to just take this on with relish and bake it and customize it and make it your own it's been fun I'm so glad to be back doing live streams I will be here next Tuesday making that peanut butter crisscross cookies now can you believe it I have over 700 recipe videos here on oh yum I do not have a peanut butter crisscross recipe on here yet so I thought that is a perfect edition so I look forward to seeing you next week I thank you for joining me and enjoy your chocolate almond toffee bars bye everyone oh I could eat these all day