“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.” ― Charles M. Schulz

In searching of this recipe, I searched words like “chocolate chip cookie candy”, “caramel candy chocolate chip”, “chocolate chip oatmeal wrapped like candy”, and so on until I finally found “Carmelita Bar”. Yes…this is it. Many years ago, before I started working in the restaurant industry, my former coworker gave me a delicious chocolate chip candies inside a beautifully wrapped colorful candy wrapper, and it’s her homemade goodies. At that time, the only thing that I remember was the chocolate chips, oatmeal, and oh so gooey, which made me curious to find out what was it? Until I started doing my recipe search and started thinking that there was caramel in it, it’s Carmelita.

This would be my second time making it, which made me more confident with timing for the baking process. There are 2 variations in how to bake this recipe, the first one is to bake it twice, and the second one is to bake everything at once. For my first try I did the bake it twice. I started with just half of the recipe, meaning I started with half of the crumbles first, then take it out. Put the second layer which are the chocolate chips, caramel, and the rest of the crumbles, then bake it again for the second time. In the end, the first layer ended up becoming too crispy for me. So this time, I tried the second variation which was to bake the entire recipe all at once, because I was shooting for the gooey one.

All right, let’s gather all the ingredients. First thing to do: make my own caramel sauce and give it some time to cool, then melt the butter.

• 

• 

Now, as you can see above, I have everything ready. Mix everything except the caramel and chocolate chips.

Put the first layer which is half of the crumbles in the greased 13×9 baking pan. Try to layer as evenly as possible to cover the pan.

• 

• 

Next, sprinkle the chocolate chip and follow that with the caramel. I use 2 butter knives to try to spread them evenly.

• 

• 

• 

And finally, cover it with the last half of the crumbles.

• 

• 

Bake at 350⁰ F. for around 20 minutes until the color become golden brown and the smell of caramel mix with chocolate chip is in the air.

• 

• 

Let it cool before slicing, wrapping, and being a nice neighbor by giving away some of them…

• 

• 

• 

• 

---

Carmelita Recipe

---

1 cup organic whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup oatmeal
¾ cup brown sugar
1 cup organic pure cane sugar
1 cup non gmo semi-sweet chocolate chips
¾ cup home made caramel sauce
½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
¾ cup melted butter

And the best thing to do with the leftover baked crumbles is to enjoy it as topping for your Greek yogurt afternoon snack.

• 

•