300!

As I wrote a few posts ago, my goal was to get to my 300th Pinterest recipe before school started.  I would like you all to note that I did it with 11 days to spare!  Yesterday I made both my 299th and my 300th recipes. 300 new recipes is quite a lot, so I debated about what might be grand enough for my 300th pin.  I looked through my Recipes to Try board and new 300 was going to be a dessert.  I looked at crazy layered cakes I had pinned, different cookies, cupcakes, bars.

I settled on what I kept calling Million Dollar Bars.  Turns out, (as I looked back at the link to write this post) they are called Cookie Dough Billionaire Bars.  I found the pin from Kevin and Amanda's blog. The original idea for this recipe however came from a book called the Cookie Dough Lover's Cookbook.

This recipe has four different parts to it and let me tell you...all four parts go oh, so well together in this bar!  There is a shortbread layer, a caramel layer, chocolate chip cookie dough layer all topped with chocolate ganache.

The only layer that gets baked is the shortbread layer.  Preheat the oven to 325.  Line a  9x13 pan with parchment paper.  Cream 2 cups of butter with 1 cup sugar, and 1/4 cup brown sugar.  Beat in 3 3/4 cups of flour and 1/2 tsp of salt.  Spread into the bottom of the pan and bake for 30 minutes.
Looking at the blog post, my shortbread layer turned out much thicker.  Next time, I will halve this part of the recipe.





While the shortbread is baking, work on the caramel.  I halved this recipe from the start because the original post said to store the other half in a jar.  I don't know about you, but I don't need to keep a jar of caramel laying around.  I'll find too many uses for it!

Melt 1 cup of sugar over medium heat.  Then add 6 Tbsp. of butter.  Once the butter and sugar are well mixed, remove from heat and stir in 1/2 cup of heavy cream and 1 Tbsp of sea salt.  The recipe asked for fleur de sel, which I couldn't find at the store so I substituted for the sea salt.  Pour the caramel over the shortbread layer (once it has cooled).

Next up- my favorite, the cookie dough layer!  This is an eggless cookie dough recipe since it doesn't get baked.  This was a good cookie dough and you could substitute it if you had a different favorite.  I cut the mini chocolate chips by 1/4 cup because there were oodles!

Cream 1 cup of butter with 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/4 cup of brown sugar.  Mix in 1 Tbsp. of vanilla and 2 Tbsp of heavy cream.  Then mix in 1 1/2 cups of flour.  After tasting it this far in, I decided to add 1 tsp of salt.  I always use unsalted butter and this cookie dough needed a little boost.  The salt made a huge difference! Finally, stir in 3/4 cups of mini chocolate chips.  End by spreading the cookie dough on top of the caramel layer.  I then froze the bars while I worked on the ganache.

I had to add this photo to show the caramel sneaking through the dough!

For the ganache, heat 1 cup of heavy cream with 1 Tbsp of vanilla until it simmers. Then pour over 1 1/2 cups of dark chocolate chips.  All this to sit for several minutes, then whisk until smooth.  Drizzle on top of the cookie dough.  Let the ganache set for about 30 minutes before serving. Then, enjoy!

Since I was calling them Million Dollar Bars, Pat said that they should really be called Million Calorie Bars.  Definitely a fitting name for this as well!

Yum! So I took these bars down to visit my sister and on the car ride home, my mom asked what my top 10 Pinterest recipes were.  My next few posts will be working my way through my top 10 favorite Pinterest recipes.  Stay tuned!