Day 4 of the Christmas Cookie Countdown is dedicated to all the people who complained that the best cookies of all time absolutely had to contain chocolate.
It is also a battle, a fight to the last crumb, between two versions of one of the easiest yet most delicious cookies ever made: Chocolate Caramel Crack(ers).
They work like this: you line a jelly roll pan with foil and parchment, cover it in a layer of crackers, pour a mixture of butter and brown sugar over it, bake it, and top it with chocolate and toasted sliced almonds. The butter/brown sugar mixture soaks into the crackers and creates an addictively buttery-crunchy cookie-like cracker.
The battle is over what kind of cracker to use. The original recipe specifies matzoh. It can also be made with saltines. The friend who introduced me to these, however, uses wasa crisp bread.
After sampling her version, and nearly passing out from the deliciousness, I decided to make them for myself, and to try them two ways: with matzoh and with wasa, to see which I liked best.
I lined half my pan with wasa and half with matzoh. I took a nibble of each. The wasa crackers were darker and richer and crunchier. The matzoh ones lighter and more delicate, with a milder crunch. I decided I liked the wasa crackers better. Then I decided I preferred the matzoh ones. Then I had to taste them again to be sure…
In the end I concluded that they are both excellent and addictive, but for my taste the wasa version is slightly better. Also, I have a stomach ache from eating too many of them. Yet I strangely still want more.
You can find the recipe for chocolate caramel crackers at Smitten Kitchen. Here is a link to it. This is the version that I used.
Abby Made Me Do It 