This is hands down my favorite cookie, especially for the holidays but good anytime. The mystery is how can four ingredients come together into such complexity. Salty, sweet, chocolate and caramel?  My friends, it is your lucky day: the recipe for mystery cookies.

Ingredients

• Sleeve of saltine crackers
• 2 cups chocolate chips (or more 🙂
• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• Optional nuts or sprinkles

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 400F
2. Line jelly roll pan or cookie sheet with the saltine crackers in single layer. You might need to break some in half to cover the full bottom of pan.
3. In a saucepan combine brown sugar and butter. Bring to a boil and let the sugary butter mixture boil for  at least 3 minutes, stirring pretty frequently. Do not skimp on the time or the bottom of the cookie want set up hard enough. Just don’t go so long it burns.
4. Immediately pour boiling mixture over saltines and spread to cover the saltines crackers completely.
5. Put the pan in the oven and bake  for at least 6 minutes but maybe more, until the crackers float to surface.
6. Remove  pan from oven and sprinkle chocolate chips over the top.
7. Let the chocolate chips sit for a few minutes, about 5, so that they soften up/staert to melt.
8. Spread melted chocolate. At this point you could add sprinkles too or nuts, like pecans, walnuts, peanut or slivered almonds, but I love them plain.
9. Cool completely at room temperature.  You can cut and store or leave in pan and slowly trim off the edge so that no on one will notice. the broken crumbly bits are really good on ice-cream or yogurt (for breakfast!).

You might also know these cookies as Saltine Toffee Bars, Sweet and Saltines or Chocolate Nut Toffee Bars…