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Recipe: Sweet and Salty Brittle and Chocolate Toffee Caramel Corn
Speaker: Chef Alec Lipschutz
"Hey everybody, it's Chef Alec. We are back in the Aramark kitchen. The year is coming to an end, so I wanted to share with you some of my favorite recipes for some sweet and salty snacks so we can end the year on a sweet note.
All righty, we're going to start out with our sweet and salty brittle. So I laid down an even layer of Saltines on a piece of sprayed parchment paper. A pro tip for this is to make your parchment paper a little bigger than your pan, so when you're done, you'll be able to lift everything out nice and easily.
So over here in our pan, we have a very simple caramel—it is just equal parts of butter and brown sugar. We're going to take this and just pour a nice even layer right over our Saltines. After that, we're going to take our rubber spatula and just spread it on nice and even. Once we have a good even spread on that, we're going to pop it in a 400° oven for 5 minutes.
All righty, our crackers covered in our caramel are hot out of the oven. And the trick is, while they're still nice and hot, we're going to cover them in a nice generous layer of chocolate chips. Now, the caramel is so hot that these things are going to start to melt right as we put them on. So we're going to grab a spreader, and we're going to gently just spread them over, and as we spread them, they're going to melt right before our eyes.
Now once they start to melt, we're going to go ahead and add any topping you want. I chose pretzels because I love the combination of sweet and salty. So we're going to go ahead and just sprinkle them right on top. And then, for just a little extra oomph, a pinch of high-quality sea salt. Now you can go ahead, put that in the fridge, and once it's cool, you'll be ready to break it up and serve it.
Great! So now we're going to make some chocolate toffee caramel corn. We're going to take that same caramel we used for our previous treat, we're going to pour some right into some popped popcorn, we're going to put a handful of chocolate, a handful of toffee bits, and mix it all together. The beautiful thing about this dish is you can add any treats you want—nuts, candy, sweet stuff, salty stuff, anything you like that fits your flavor profile. We're just going to, honestly, give it a quick toss and then pour it right onto a sheet tray. You can go ahead and pop that in the fridge, and when it's cool, it's ready to snack on.
There you have it—two delicious treats. I hope your New Year is as sweet as they are!"
