Cinnamon Sugar Caramel Blondies

So it's September.  It's football season.  It's officially too cold to wear shorts and tank tops.  Most people are busy getting all depressed and sad that their days of drinking beer by the pool are coming to a close, and scantily clad ladies will no longer be roaming the streets.  But I, as a baker and a glutton, couldn't be more stoked.


My family had a gathering last weekend, and I got to bring the desserts.  And due to all the reasons stated above, I decided I needed to bring "fall" treats.  I wanted my house to smell like cinnamon and spice after baking...whatever it is I was going to bake.  I wanted to grab a pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks and sit down and enjoy a little bit of autumn.  So, I made two different bars- Pumpkin Pie Bars and Cinnamon Sugar Caramel Blondies.  They were both good, but I'll write about the blondies first.


I showed up with giant tray of amazingness to contribute to the festivities.  (What can I say.  I'm nothing if not modest!)   How my husbands family does get togethers is pretty epic to begin with, and this was the just the icing on the metaphorical cake.  But instead of cake, these treats topped off an atery clogging day of fried deliciousness.  I'm talking fried fish, fried chicken wings, cheese balls, jalapeno poppers, doughtnuts- you name it, these people will deep fat fry it.  God, I love my family.  


Oh- and they also make their own wine.  I use the term wine loosely.  I think "wine flavored everclear" more accurately describes this stuff.  Did I mention that I love my family?


Anywhoo- after mowing down on all this fried goodness, I broke out the dessert tray.  Despite being not hungry in the slightest, I think I ate like 9 bars throughout the course of the day.  Then I sat around immobile/watched people shoot things until dinner time rolled around.  Most normal people would skip dinner at this point, or have a salad or something lame like that.  We are not normal.  We heated the oil up and threw in more food.  Seriously- I LOVE MY FAMILY!


So then I came home, ate more bars, and prayed that I could somehow learn to digest faster due to the massive food baby that had reached full term somewhere between my 5th serving of fried cheese and my last caramel bar.


Oh yeah, the caramel bars.  Holy cow- these are good.  Hands down my favorite bar I've ever made.  Sweet, a little salty, and wonderfully flavorful.  Soft, gooey, happy- and they made my house smell beautiful.  I <3 them.  Make them.  Before winter rolls around and you are forced to embrace all that is peppermint.

Cinnamon Sugar Caramel Blondies
Recipe adapted from: http://www.the-baker-chick.com/2011/08/cinnamon-caramel-blondies.html

Ingredients 
2-2/3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 cups packed brown sugar
1 cup (8 ounces) salted butter, at room temperature
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract (plus one tsp, optional)
1 14 oz bag of caramels unwrapped

1/3 cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon


Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9×13-inch baking pan; set aside.  Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg in a medium bowl; set aside.



Beat together the butter and brown sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, and then the vanilla. Beat, scraping the bowl, until thoroughly combined. On low speed, gradually add the flour mixture until just combined. Give the dough a final stir with a spatula or wooden spoon to make sure the flour is incorporated.  Spread half of  the dough evenly into the pan (It is going to be a thick batter so you may need  greased spatula...or greased hands... to help with this).


Heat the caramels, cream and a tsp of vanilla (optional) in a saucepan over medium-high heat until thick and melted. Pour the caramel sauce over the batter.

Distribute the remaining batter as evenly as possible over the caramel. (I grabbed small handfuls, pressed them flat, and pieced them on top of the caramel.  If it isn't perfect, that's ok!)  Combine the granulated sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl and sprinkle evenly over the top of the batter.


Bake for 25 minutes or until the surface springs back when gently pressed (They may look a little brown- but that's only due to the cinnamon- it's OK!)  Cool completely before cutting. Store in an airtight container.

More Popcorn and a Triathlon

So in all the haste and excitement of signing up for summer races this year, my friends and I decided we really wanted to get in on the HyVee Triathlon.  It's apparently a pretty big deal.  It's an Olympic qualifier event, they give away over a million dollars in prizes, and athletes from all over the world to swim in our lake, bike on our streets, run to our capital, and eat our free post-race cookies.

There were, of course, a couple mild problems with wanting to compete.  At the time of singing up, A. I hadn't swum further than the distance between the pool bar and the deep end in about 5 years... and B. I didn't own a bike. Solution: Find two saps friends to form a relay team who will do the swim and bike while I run.  They do the parts I don't like, and I get all the glory of crossing the finish line and getting a medal.  Love it.

So to say thank you to these fine women, without whom I would not have been able to participate in this event, I made popcorn.  Our swimmer had tried my birthday cake popcorn that I made awhile back (after it sat in the car for 36 hours, melted, and reformed into a gallon sized bag hunk of deliciousness) and despite all this, she loved it.  So I made a couple new varieties- half of which we shoved into our transition bag to munch on during the event, the rest stayed in the car for the ride home.

Side note- apparently bringing in candy coated popcorn to a serious athletic event makes the "serious" athletes stare at you disapprovingly.  Whatever- carbs make you go fast.  We were just carbo-loading.  And every real athlete knows that cake mix is the best and purest pre-race carb.  I think.  Probably.  I like popcorn.

Other side note- this was probably one of the best, and most fun days of my life.  We hauled our little race-tattooed selves out of bed sometime between the hours of I hate life and F-off I'm still sleeping (so, like, 4) and made our way to the lake.  Two of my friends did the swim and after much waiting, they took off and absolutely rocked the entire 1.5K.  To give you some perspective, I did a baby-tri last month that was a 300 meter swim.  That's about 3 city blocks.  This was 5 times that length.  Holy god, that would have been a lot of flailing and lake water ingested.

Next, my girlfriend went off on the bike ride.  After dropping a chain and conquering the 25 miles of "rolling hills" (which is a really pretty way of saying that this ride was going to kick peoples asses.) She rolled on up and passed me the race chip.  My turn!

So, here's the thing.  I can run- I know that.  I've done a marathon.  I enjoy running.  I have, in the past, run a lot and trained well for various events.  I apparently have developed a bit of a running 'tude where I think I'm too good to train for a 6 mile run because I've done so many distances much longer than that.  But it had been awhile since I ran those distances.  Like, months.  And apparently my arrogance kicked my ass.  After standing for 5 hours, not training, and being freaked out/tense for the 30 min before my run because I was eyeing down every biker looking for my teammate... the run sucked.  After what I thought was about 20 minutes of running, my body was killing me and I was 99% certain they must not be posting mile markers every single mile.  Then I passed the sign that said "One Mile" and I knew I was in for it.

But somehow I stumbled across that finish line 53 minutes later, collected my medals and found my team.  Then the post race binge fest commenced.  Crap food tastes so much sweeter when it's free and I'm in spandex.  So after 4 free cookies, 3 pieces of free cake and a free protein bar, we grabbed lunch (and beer!) and called it a day.

But then we discovered the car popcorn.  Despite being not hungry in the slightest, we concluded our fantastic triathlon event by diving into the bags face first and frantically gorging, leaving our faces and hands completely covered in melted white chocolate.  We are the definition of classy.  It helps that I was a little drunk by this point.

So there you have it.  Running.  Swimming.  Biking.  Popcorn.  Beer.  Good friends.  Free stuff.  A medal.  Epic.

And now for some notes on my popcorn....

These are the four kinds I made: Birthday Cake (which I already described here), Nutterbutter, Cookies n' Cake, and Reese's Peanut Butter Pretzel.

Cookies n' Cake
One bag of popped, buttered popcorn (placed in a large bowl, no kernels)
8 ounces white chocolate
3/8 cup yellow cake mix (dry mix, not batter)
10-15 crushed Oreos

Melt chocolate in microwave according to package directions and whisk in cake mix.  Pour over popcorn and Oreos and mix.  Spread on a piece of parchment paper.  When hardened, break into pieces and serve.

Reese's Peanut Butter Pretzel

One bag of popped, buttered popcorn (placed in a large bowl, no kernels)

5 ounces white chocolate

5 ounces of peanut butter chips

1 cup chocolate coated peanut butter filled pretzels

Reese's Pieces (as many as you want)

Melt chocolate and peanut butter chips in microwave according to package directions.  Pour over popcorn, candies and pretzels and mix.  Spread on a piece of parchment paper.  When hardened, break into pieces and serve.

Nutterbutter 
One bag of popped, buttered popcorn (placed in a large bowl, no kernels)
5 ounces white chocolate
5 ounces of peanut butter chips
1 cup mini Nutterbutters


Melt chocolate and peanut butter chips in microwave according to package directions.  Pour over popcorn and cookies and mix.  Spread on a piece of parchment paper.  When hardened, break into pieces and serve.