Just because I don’t post as often as I ought to, doesn’t mean that I’m not always preparing for posts.  I take lots of photos, look up lots of data and try lots of recipes.  Many recipes are researched, tweaked, photographed, made and turn out… icky.  For instance, the no-bake  cookies of last week that were only firm enough to cut at refrigerator temperature.  At room temperature they turned into a pan of chocolate sludge, and at freezer temperatures they were too hard to cut.  I have found, to my dismay, that many food bloggers post recipes even if they don’t turn out well, just so that they have something to post.  I’m learning to read and heed the disclaimers.

The recipe I’m about to impart to you is not a fluke.  It is, frankly, heavenly.

At a baby shower a few months ago I ate a bar cookie that was supposed to taste like a Twix candy bar.  It was very good with its layers of shortbread, caramel and chocolate.  I asked for the recipe and reproduced it at home.  The recipe called for crushed pre-made cookies (the Keebler elves had made them, apparently) topped with melted caramel candies (unwrapping all those little buggers took time), and spread with melted milk chocolate chips.  The result was tasty, but I couldn’t get over the store-bought flavor of the shortbread.  This cookie has three simple flavors that need to complement each other, and since I don’t usually eat store-bought baked goods, it took some adjustment for my palate.  However, they froze very well and defrosted quickly.

Then I found a better recipe.  And then I made it perfect.  It is a basic shortbread cookie crust, topped with a simple homemade caramel, then topped with chocolate ganache.  The driving impetus for this improvement was that I had leftover heavy cream in the fridge from making homemade ice cream, and needed to use it before it went bad.  The ganache topping adds a bright, lighter flavor which keeps the cookie from being cloying.  Yum.

Eat a small piece with some hot tea and be very, very happy.