Cookbook challenge, week 24: White chocolate biscuits and chocolate caramel slice

The theme is chocolate - and what better week to do two recipes instead of one?

The first is white chocolate biscuits, from my Nanna's cookbook. This recipe is failproof, delicious and terribly unhealthy - as all good biscuit recipes should be (cookies are a sometimes food..!).

Ingredients:
250g butter
1 cup brown sugar
4 tbs sweetened condensed milk
2 cups self raising flour
pinch of salt
250g chopped white chocolate (I supplemented this with some milk chocolate as well)

Preheat oven to 170ºC and grease and line two biscuit trays.
Cream butter and sugar, then add the condensed milk and beat well.
Add flour, chocolate and salt.
Roll into 2.5cm balls and place on trays.
Cook for 11-13 minutes or until pale brown.
Cool on a wire rack.
Makes 50 biscuits.




The chocolate caramel slice recipe comes from one of my oldest cookbooks, Family Circle's Cooking: A Commonsense Guide. It contains heaps of simple, classic recipes and I learned a lot from it when I started cooking. This is the first time I've made this recipe.

Ingredients:
125g plain sweet biscuits, crushed
80g melted butter
2 tbs dessicated coconut
400g sweetened condensed milk (but I only used about 300g)
125g butter, extra
1/3 cup caster sugar
1/3 cup golden syrup
250g milk chocolate melts
1 tbs vegetable oil

Grease a shallow 30x20cm tin (note: I ended up transferring to a smaller tin as the base was spread too thinly in the original tin), line with foil, and grease the foil.
Process together the biscuit crumbs, melted butter and coconut, then press the mixture into the tray.
Combine the condensed milk, extra butter, sugar and golden syrup in a small saucepan.
Stir over a low heat for 15 minutes, until the sugar has dissolved and the caramel is thick and slightly browned.
Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly.
Spread the caramel over the base and smooth the surface.
Melt the milk chocolate and oil (either carefully in the microwave or using a double boiler).
Spread the chocolate over the caramel.
Allow to partially set then mark the chocolate into 24 triangles.
Refrigerate until firm.
Store in an airtight container for up to two days.

As you can see by the picture below, this didn't really work out so well! I accidentally let the chocolate get too hard before trying to slice it, and that combined with the softness of the caramel and the base means that trying to cut it wasn't at all successful! But despite the messiness it was still rather tasty.