Mennonite Toffee Top Bars

By Kevin Williams

Well, I am sure you could do better with yours than I did with mine and mine we're bad at all, so there's some encouragement for you.

Call me crazy, but I enjoy baking and cooking with my 4-year-old, Aster. Bea hasn't quite gotten the hang of anything yet.  But she will.

Yesterday Aster and I picked out a recipe from an Old Order Mennonite cookbook called "Toffee Top Bars."  The recipe didn't quite turn out like I had hoped or like I think it was supposed to, but the results weren't bad.

The bars rose quite nicely in the oven and then collapsed when I took them out. Not sure why.  I did melt (soften, not liquefy) the butter before adding it to the mix and that may have caused an issue since the batter was supposed to be rather coarse.

We didn't have coconut or nuts as the recipe calls for, but those seemed very optional to me, so we went ahead and made them anyway.

Batter for the toffee top bars

These are the "crumbs" that were supposed to be spread on top of the batter, but because I softened the butter so much, it was more like wet sand than crumbs and that might have been the problem. Probably wasn't helped by Aster dumping the "wet sand" all in one spot.

We managed to spread out the "wet sand" and here Aster prepares to spread the chocolate chips.

They did rise in the oven OK

They then collapsed into a bar half the size of the ones rising in the oven. Why? These really weren't bad at all, would have been better with coconut and nuts on top.