Saltine Cracker Toffee

If you can believe it, this toffee is made with saltine crackers!! I usually associate saltine crackers with cheese and crackers or when you're eating a bowl of soup. This past Saturday, Cathy's Kitchen was very busy. I was in a baking mood and made four different things - sour cream kuchen, peanut butter bars, this toffee and homemade mac and cheese.  To make this toffee, you start out with a "sleeve" of  saltine crackers.
  

Ever wonder why it's called a "sleeve?" I guess maybe because it looks like a sleeve on a shirt, perhaps????  Anyways, these were easy to make, and I found the hardest part was waiting for the chocolate to firm up.  I was pretty impatient and kept touching it about every 20 minutes to see if it was hard yet - it took about three hours before it was ready for "sampling."  This toffee is super rich, but it so good (and addictive).  If you are looking for gifts to give your kid's teachers, bus drivers and other special people in their lives, you could toss some of these into a plastic decorative gift bag or a metal tin. I love giving homemade baked gifts because you can make it exactly the way you want!

Ingredients:

1 "sleeve" saltine crackers (about 38-40) 
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 cup light brown sugar
2 cups (12 ounces) semi-sweet chocolate morsels
Sprinkles or nuts (if desired)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Cover a jelly roll pan (11 inches x  17 inches) with aluminum foil.  You have to use a pan with a little bit of edge or "lip" or else when you put the pan in the oven, the mixture will spill all over the place :(  Once you cover the pan with the foil, spray a light layer of non-stick cooking spray on it.   Line up the crackers like this:

 

 
Set the pan aside.  In medium saucepan, put the two sticks of butter and the brown sugar.   Bring to a boil slowly. Once it gets to a full boil, keep stirring occasionally for three minutes.  Remove from heat and pour the butter and brown sugar mixture all over the crackers, coating entirely.  Put in oven for five minutes.  Remove from oven and sprinkle the two cups of semi-sweet morsels all over.  Let it sit about two minutes and then using a spatula or knife spread the chocolate all over until it coats the entire pan. The chocolate morsels melt pretty quickly, making it easy to spread.  I put holiday sprinkles on half and left the other half plain.

 

You could certainly leave it all plain, make it all sprinkles, or add thinly sliced almonds or finely crushed peanuts.  Let this cool completely (at least three hours) and then break off pieces with your hands. Store up to one week in a covered container at room temperature.  You could get the kids to help line up the crackers or do the sprinkles.  Dominic woke up this morning saying he wanted this for breakfast.  He got the kuchen instead :)