Gina’s Chocolate-Tar Squares

Roger threw a housewarming party on Saturday — it was a lot of fun and there was plenty of food & beverages. In particular, Gina made what she called “chocolate-tar squares”. From what she tells me, she initially thought about making some brownies but then realized that she didn’t have the necessary accessories to the brownie mix (an egg, oil and so on).

So, she instead decided to make some brownie-shaped bars out of packaged cookie dough. I can only guess that she already had the cookie dough on hand since, if she were going to the store for it, she could have just as easily bought some eggs and oil while she was there ;). In any case, in a moment of recipe freestyling, Gina decided on the tar squares.

Simply, she placed the cookie dough across the bottom of a standard 8x8 pan — it was if she was making brownies, only not really. She baked them for the recommended 15 minutes or so, but found that they were still uncooked after that time. Since she had taken them out of the oven anyway (to test their doneness), she drizzled on some caramel before returning them to the oven (hey, why not?).

Apparently, these pseudo-brownies took almost a hour to cook through. Perhaps when sized into cookies, the dough is heated from all sides and bakes faster that way (?). After cooking, Gina sliced the chocolate-tar into squares for serving. All of this baking & preparation is from what Gina told me — I can only speak first-hand on the eating part ;).

As you may have already guessed, the caramel didn’t really form a layer on top of the squares but rather infused itself into them. And, as the dough is chewy to begin with, Gina coined the “tar” moniker. Perhaps “chocolate goo squares” or even “chocolate chewy squares” would have also worked.

As I can’t resist homemade treats, I soon tried one of the chocolate-tar squares. Sure enough, it was both chewy and square. And, the caramel made for a pleasant sidekick to the chocolate chips. In all, they were very tasty, especially considering that the recipe didn’t exist before that evening.

Being the chocolate aficionado that I am, I wonder if they could be made even better with a layer of chopped dark chocolate to accompany the caramel layer. Or, the chopped chocolate could be substituted for the caramel for an even-chocolatier treat. Perhaps some day I’ll have to give that a try.