Caramel Pear Bars

I love caramel. And toffee. And butterscotch. I think they are pretty much all the same thing plus or minus an ingredient or two. Regardless, they are all my favourite. They cause me to break into my happy dance.

It’s not very pretty really.

I’m not a dancer.

At all.

But, happy dances MUST be performed when necessary so I do my best.

I have yet to master the skill of making my own caramel. Which makes me sad, dang it.

I really, really, REALLY want to make a salted caramel sauce for about a million things. After my humungous failure with salted caramel ice cream I am a little gun shy. I’m thinking that Sue will have to help me attempt it again. In the meantime – this will satisfy my need for caramel for at least a day. You have to love Betty Crocker for making things super simple.

I MAY have made some adjustments to this recipe to suit my tastes....

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Caramel Pear Bars

Ingredients

1/2 cup cold butter

1 pouch (17.5 oz) Betty Crocker Oatmeal Cookie Mix

1 egg

2 cups finely chopped pear

3/4 cup caramel topping

Directions

Preheat oven to 350. Spray bottom of 13 x 9 pan with cooking spray. (Or you can skip the cooking spray and line the pan with foil or parchment paper to make it easier to lift out and cut – I still spray the foil/parchment paper with cooking spray)

In a large bowl, cut butter into cookie mix until it resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in egg until mixture is crumbly but will stick together if you squish it in your hand. Reserve 1 1/2 cup cookie mixture. Press remaining cookie mixture into bottom of pan. Bake for 10 minutes.

Sprinkle pear evenly over crust.

Drizzle caramel sauce evenly over pear.

Sprinkle reserved crumbs evenly over caramel sauce.

Bake 20 – 25 minutes or until golden brown. Cool completely.

 You can, of course, replace the pear with apples. Tart apples work best – in my opinion.

I was thinking this would be rather tasty served warm with a scoop of ice cream. But then, I do like to add as many calories to a dish as possible.

These bars hold up fairly well and would probably transport in a school lunch with no problems.

Another delicious recipe to use up some of those pears hanging around now that it is fall. I think we are down to a million pears instead of a bazillion now. We are slowly eating our way through.

It’s a good thing we like pears!


Be sure to pop over to Carole's Chatter for tons of tasty links!