Toffee Squares

Tomorrow evening I'm getting together with some of the women from my knitting group for a cookie exchange. I was hard pressed to come up with a recipe, especially since I don't eat sugar anymore. I had thought about making some sugar-free version with Splenda but I just didn't find something I liked right away in my search on the Internet. I did find a Lemon Bar recipe that I want to make sometime since Lemon Bars are my favorite and I haven't had any in years since I gave up sugar. :(

Anyway, when the ex left she left her Betty Crocker Cooky Book. This book is older then me, printed in 1963.

It has some great recipes in it for all kinds of cookies. I wanted something that would be easy and wouldn't require me to form or mold individual cookies. The Toffee Square recipe was perfect.



Because I bought the butter required for the recipe an hour or so before I started prep, I looked online for a quick way to soften butter. Several places suggested cutting small slices so that the individual pieces would soften quicker. The trick worked although it does look like a lot of butter huh?



This is what the pre-cooked crust looks like once the egg yolks, butter, brown sugar, and vanilla are mixed with the flour and salt and spread on a cookie sheet.



The recipe calls for chocolate bars so I splurged (they were on sale too) for Ghiradelli. When I opened the packaged and caught the smell of the chocolate I almost couldn't resist eating some. I didn't and all the chocolate was used for the Toffee Squares.



Here is the crust after it came out of the oven.



It was fun putting the chocolate squares on the crust and watching them slowly melt across it.



Here it is with all that chocolate goodness spread across the top.



Then I sprinkled almonds pieces that I crushed across the top.



And here they are cut into squares.



I ended up making three batches since there will be between 16 and 20 people coming to the cookie exchange. I need 1/2 dozen for each person.

I hope everyone likes them!