Chocolate Caramel Crackers

One of my favorite food combinations is Caramel & Chocolate.  However, my love for this is nothing compared to that of my friend Nora.  This is a girl who takes her caramel seriously - she will go out of her way to find any sort of caramely goodness. 

One of my favorite stories about Nora's hunt for caramel is when she was in Seattle on business.  She left a business meeting a little early to run to a store to get what she considers the best caramel sauce ever, only to find out they were out and the machine that makes it was broken. 

I used her love of caramel as my inspiriation when my friends and I got together a few weeks ago for a cookie exchange.  I stumbled upon this recipe for Chocolate Caramel Crackers.  I'm really glad I did.  They are so very good, and so very easy.  There are a couple tricks that I figured out to help you along the way.

Chocolate Caramel Crackers By David Lebovitz
Ingredients
-40 Saltine Crackers
-1 cup unsalted butter
-1 cup packed light brown sugar
-A big pinch of sea salt
-1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
-1 1/2 cups semi or bittersweet chocolate

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Spray an 11x17 inch baking sheet with pam, line the pan with wax or parchment paper then spray the paper.  I found that this helps the crackers not slide when you pour the caramel over them.  One of my friends tried covering the pan with foil - as the original recipe says to do.  Her crackers slid all over the place. 

Line the crackers on the baking sheet.

In a medium saucepan melt the butter and brown sugar together and stir over medium heat until it begins to boil.  Let boil for 3 minutes stirring well.

Removed from heat and add the salt and vanilla, then quickly pour it over the crackers.  It will begin to harden as soon as you take it off the heat so this part needs to be fast.

Bake the crackers for 15 minutes. As soon as you remove them from the oven sprinkle the chocolate chips over the top and let stand for 5 minutes.  Once they are mostly melted spread them evenly across the

crackers.

Once they are cool, break into pieces.  When mine were cool i gently pulled up on the wax paper and it popped the crackers off one row at a time, then i gently broke them off cracker by cracker.