There were two chocolate caramel slice story paths I could have taken for this blog post.
For example, I could have told you about how my primary school best friend used to come over to play twice a week after school, and how my mum would most often serve us a super-fresh baguette with butter for afternoon tea. Every now and again, though, she’d treat us to a chocolate caramel slice from our local cafe, which was the acme of chocolate caramel slice deliciousness. The base was, well, your standard base, but the caramel was four times thicker and deeper in flavour than any other cafe’s caramel slice, and the chocolate on top was more like a ganache in its soft richness.
I lived for those chocolate caramel slice afternoons. In retrospect, my best friend was lucky I liked her so much, otherwise I would’ve stolen her half without a modicum of guilt.
The other story I could’ve told you was how I made the chocolate caramel slice pictured throughout this post for my friend Em’s birthday party. I could’ve told you about how I met Em when we both worked at the same bookstore, and how she drew me out of my self-imposed-misery-shell in Year 11 and taught me that it’s not only okay, but necessary, to be silly and giggly sometimes. I could’ve told you about how Em literally ran away with the circus, and about how glad I am that she came back instead of getting impregnated by a fire-eating, baton-twirling, lion-taming midget. (Not that I have anything against fire-eating, baton-twirling, lion-taming midgets. I hear those guys are super fun.)
But you know what?
Neither of those stories adequately conveys how scrumptious this particular chocolate caramel slice was. Or how surprised I am that such a sweet, rich, unctuous-yet-crumbly-yet-silky treat isn’t more well-known, or as frequently made, throughout the world as it is in Australia.
Or how much tastier my home-made version is than the Gü Millionaire’s Flapjack which inspired me to make it, or how I’m planning to make a vegan version soon with nuttelex and soy sweetened condensed milk. And with double the amount of chocolate on top.
Because even though this particular slice was all kinds of yummy, you can never have too much chocolate.
Chocolate Caramel Slice
- 1 cup self raising flour
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 cup desiccated coconut
- 125g butter, melted
- 400g can sweetened condensed milk
- 2 tbsp golden syrup
- 30g butter, extra
- 1 cup (150g) dark chocolate, melted
- 30g butter, even more extra-y.
- Preheat oven to 180°C. Line an 18cm x 28cm lamington tin with baking paper.
- In a medium bowl, combine the self-raising flour, brown sugar, coconut, and melted butter. Press evenly into the prepared pan and bake for 10 minutes.
- While the base is baking, combine the sweetened condensed milk, golden syrup, and (the first lot of) extra butter in a small/medium saucepan. Stir over medium heat until almost boiling, stirring constantly (about 5 minutes). Reduce heat to low and cook for another 5 minutes, until the caramel has darkened and thickened a little.
- Pour the caramel over the base and bake for another 10 minutes. Cool.
- Melt the dark chocolate and last 30g of butter together, spread over the base and leave to set. Can be refrigerated to help the setting process. Cut into pieces, then gobble gobble gobble.
Oooh! I can only imagine how good this would be if I added a layer of peanut butter somewhere…
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This looks great, and I’m sure those vegan substitutes would work.
Great stories, I agree with Em about needing to be silly sometimes.
I’ll have to blog the vegan version when I try it! If only soy sweetened condensed milk was easier to find… And yes, sometimes there’s nothing better than dancing around and giggling for no reason
Oh, I bet if you replaced the 30g of butter with 60g of super-creamy (not natural) peanut butter, you’d have that peanut-buttery goodness in there that you’re looking for. Or you could mix chopped, salted peanuts into the caramel.
Or both.
You’re kindof a genius. I like the peanut butter instead of butter idea!
You could replace the coconut with peanut flour (a totally awesome product which I never knew existed until I saw it in a Chinese shop here in Paris one day), or you could sprinkle peanuts over the chocolate layer before it hardens. I’d like to see some chili in there too. Might just have to make this myself, now.
Oh, I’m so envious! I’ve heard of peanut flour on American blogs recently, but have never seen it here. I might ask at a few Asian stores, if that’s where you found yours. I want it deperately! Oooh, chili is a great idea. In the chocolate, and then some salted peanuts in the caramel maybe…
Apparently, according to Tal Ronnen, you can make your own nut flour (if you have a food processor or big-deal blender). Just freeze the nuts really very well first, so they don’t turn to peanut butter. I haven’t tried this, so I can’t say whether it works or not!
Hmm, I can see that working, as there’s that moment when making nut butter in which the nuts are like nut meal rather than butter… Wow, that sentence was not well-written at all. But I think you’ll know what I mean!
I lurve chocolate caramel slice. But who doesn’t? It is surprising that it’s not more widespread. I reckon the Canadian equivalent of a Nanaimo Bar comes closest though. There are many flavour varaitions of a Nanaimo bar (including peanut butter), whereas our Chocolate Caramel Slice is more often kept quite close to the original isn’t it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanaimo_bar
Hmm, I much prefer our caramel filling to the boring vanilla custard filling of a Nanaimo, but you’re right – at least aesthetically they’re quite similar! I remember being really suprised that no one in America had heard of a chocolate caramel slice when I was there. It’s chocolate, caramel, and butter – surely that’s what America is best at!
Oh I love all those stories and this masterpiece!
Thank you!
Loved reading this, Hannah! Caramel slices were something I only ever got at my school tuck shop, when a random and v sweet craving took hold! They were SO good. I love the look of yours. Your friend was v lucky that you didn’t steal hers. seriously, it wouldn’t have been unexpected – how delicious is it!?
Heidi xo
I guess I’m just too good a friend
I love that you have choc caramel slice memories too! I never had one from my school canteen, but probably because I knew I could make them better 
Seriously – you must have overhead Mr BBB and I at the shops the other day!! I was telling him that I have major caramel slice cravings!!!!
You found me out! I’m stalking you
Oh my god I can actually make chocolate caramel slice now! I just realised this. You see, I haven’t been able to eat it in SO long (like, um, over 10 years when the doctor first told me that dairy was out which was a tragic day for my love of mint chocolate chip and goody goody gum drops ice creams so I binged and was so sick it wasn’t even funny…except that it is now I look back on it) but now I can buy soy condensed milk which is so cool if simply because I can made chocolate caramel slice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jeepers, I think I might be excited or something…
Hooray!!! I’m super duper excited for you now! Soy sweetened condensed milk is really hard for me to find, so you might beat me to it in terms of blogging a vegan version. Oh, I hope it lives up to your memories! Remember, if you go via this recipe… double the chocolate
Soy condensed milk is actually quite easy to find in Auckland these days. What is even easier to find though is my extreme slackness to do most things I say I’ll do…
Amen, sister. I have so many recipes bookmarked, it’s scary…
the only reason i never used to eat too many caramel slice’s was cause i always thought they were too sweet! But I haven’t had one for years, it is making me feel very nostalgic…
They are spectacularly sweet, aren’t they? That’s why I’m planning to mess around with peanut butter and salt in future
My mouth is watering! This looks absolutely delicious. And yes, it’s true that one can never have enough chocolate
Thanks Bianca! It’s definitely tasty. Glad to hear I have support on the chocolate front too
Caramel slice is so underrated – it’s the one slice I will always end up buying if I find myself staring at it in a cafe. I agree about doubling the chocolate topping
I hadn’t had one in years before making this. I might have to start tracking down and comparing cafe versions now
When confronted by a yummy looking caramel slice, I always think back to one occasion when an engineering manager of mine brought platefuls of caramel slices in to work. When asked how and why, he disclosed that making caramel slice was simply a passion of his. Any weirdness was instantly forgiven upon taste testing the said slice. We engineers do have strange habits do we not?
Aw, I love this story! Good on him for telling his secret! Though in some ways an engineer loving baking makes sense – it’s a very precise, straight-forward, follow-the-rules type of cooking after all!
Your explanation behind the slice and your reason for making it as just as delicious as the slice itself.
Thank you Kath
That’s really nice to hear.
I was inspired by your earlier post about caramel slice and tried to make some recently… I’ll be posting about it soon. It was a failure, but a delicious, delicious failure.
And I completely agree about the peanut butter. Yum!
Don’t tell anyone, but sometimes I think delicious failures are better than delicious successes. ‘Cause with failures, you often end up with a tasty structurally-unsound mess that you just *have* to eat all yourself, because you couldn’t rightfully serve it to anyone else…
Can’t wait to read your post!
I love caramel slice! Its my favourite chocolate dessert!
Hurrah! Definitely a good favourite to have
Whoaaaaa, I just made chocolate caramel slice last week! You know why? Because I saw it posted on Foodgawker as “a traditional Australian classic” or something and I just thought, “Wait, what? Chocolate caramel slice is identified as specifically Australian?” – I never thought of it as such! And I’ve lived in Australia all my 25 years! So it’s always interesting to be taught by an American food blog that chocolate caramel slice is specifically Australian. I mean, I had it during my childhood, from cafes or bake stalls at school fetes or whatever, but that doesn’t mean it’s Australian. I could have gotten a danish or a croissant – that doesn’t make those Australian too.
So it was only after a heap of researching that I found out that a heap of people (and some of them are Australian) consider chocolate caramel slice to be very Australian. I never knew. I think it’s because it’s the recipe on the side of the Nestle condensed milk tins, so it was a popular recipe.
Anyway, I got pissed off at the American food blog (consisting of a conglomerate of multiple stay-at-home-mom food bloggers) for going on about this recipe’s Australian origin and then for changing like 1 ingredient and saying it was a sufficiently different recipe to warrant a renaming – caramel chocolate BARS, which they said they chose because it sounds nice and American.
Hmm, I’m going to make Sacher torte then change the apricot jam for peach jam and say I’ve invented an entirely new recipe. It’s now called Fair Dinkum Cake, mate. Take that, Austria!
I’m so petty.
Jess, my dear, you have *got* to stop frequenting those blogs. You’re going to give yourself an ulcer, even if that ulcer comes with a stronger sense of your own superiority
I hadn’t realised choc caramel slices were Australian until I went overseas and discovered that no one knew what they were. The Millionaire’s Shortbread thing in England is the closest I’ve seen, in fact.
All that aside, my hackles are definitely raised about the one ingredient justifying a name change thing, though only because you say this name change was to make it more “American”. Heaven forbid something tasty belongs to another country, after all! :/
Caramel slice is something I associate with my childhood. I think it is definitely an Aussie thing though. My sister loooooves it, and made it frequently we were growing up, since it’s such an easy dish for a child to help with or make themselves. I find it a bit too sweet though, so it’s never been a favourite of mine, but I do like the idea of adding in a layer of peanut butter!
Me too! (As you can tell from this post already, I guess…) I think brownies were my go-to childhood recipe, but I definitely made this a few times too. Looks like I’ll definitely have to give the peanut butter recipe a go soon
Oh my god. I want to eat that!!!
Then, you know what? You totally should.
And I’ll never forgive – if I ever see them again – Jo and Richard for selling out of that cafe. It was one of the reasons we bought in this suburb! Oh, and the baguettes were nice too weren’t they?
If I was able to recognise them, I’d have angry words with them too
Funny you mention the baguette – I actually started a draft for this post rhapsodising about the white baguette with salami, marinated capsicum, and marinated artichokes that I always, always, got, and how the vinegary deliciousness would make the bottom part of the bread soggy and chewy at the same time… but then I thought that salami didn’t fit in well with the sweetness of the recipe!
In our family we hardly ever talk about chocolate caramel slice anymore without hearing all over again the story, owing to a particularly ingenious theft racket my bro, cousins & one of the neighbour’s tag along kid had going on for years until we were finally busted – yep, you guessed it…. it was the ratty neighbours tag along kid who did us in – otherwise we’d still have a steady supply of chocolatey caramely goodness on tap.
Good memories
*laughs* Seems like most of us have interesting childhood choc caramel slice recipes to tell! Who knew it was such an integral part of growing up in Australia? Your story is particularly awesome
“or as frequently made, throughout the world as it is in Australia.”
…. except possibly in NZ
In EVERY. SINGLE. BAKERY. Some good… some great… some crappy. I like the great ones. My sister makes a good one. And I will be trying your recipe this weekend, and seeing if it’s one of the great ones 
If you do, DOUBLE THE CHOCOLATE! That’s probably the best way to ensure it’s one of the great recipes
I’m relieved to hear at least one other country supports the chocolate caramel slice. But then again Australia and New Zealand have a lot of food specialties in common, don’t they?
Caramel slice is a million times more delicious than it has any right to be. And friends are a million times more awesome than…non-friends.
Yes, I am wise.
You’re so wise, I want to photocopy your brain and use it to write my PhD. You in?
LOL can I just share that I was just thinking “Mmm I would love to spread that with peanut butter” and then I just read what you said! That sounds amazing Hannah
Hahaha! Great minds think alike, right? Or maybe I’ve just mentioned peanut butter so many times on this blog that I’ve trained y’all to associate me with with it, a la Pavlov’s dog
You sneaky thing. You told both stories!
It was a long time between caramel slice indulgences for me, until I had some the other day at work. Working so many nights lately, most often Year 12 graduations, has some benefits in that they sometimes involve catered functions and often the organisers are lovely and thrust some of the catering upon us. If the catering is good, this is a god send on a long shift, and last week I got my year’s worth of caramel slice in my belly in one night.
Given my recent caramel slice overload, I am loving the photos of yours and think you’ve done a lovely job, but I find myself really really craving fresh baguette with butter now..
*giggles* Shhh! I don’t think anyone else noticed!
Oh, lucky you with the tasty tasty free catering goodies! The only thing better than homemade caramel slice is free made-well-by-others caramel slice. Or, well, maybe homemade is still better. I don’t know. I’ll have to wait until someone gives me free chocolate caramel slice to make a definitive statement on the matter.
looks delicious – I had to compare it to the recipe I made last year and it is the same but your cooking times are less. I thought everyone all over the world ate choc caramel slice till I discovered that the base of millionaire’s shortbread in Scotland (well the UK) is more shortbread and less coconut – I think our version is superior! More texture. And like you it was part of my childhood – I just wish it was more part of my adulthood.
But I am interested in your memories of the pieces you loved having so much caramel. I think lots of cafes go overboard on such slices and it just becomes too sickly to have too much caramel. Whereas your slice looks suitably restrained.
Why, of course the Aussie version is superior!
Yes, the textural contrast is lovely with ours. Plus our base is less crumbly and messy than shortbread, surely. Which means you can eat more without leaving evidence behind…
Thank you for awarding points to my slice’s restraint! The cafe version I mentioned really was a bit over-the-top, which is probably why mum ensured it was a “sometimes” treat. I had a pretty intense sweet tooth as a child, though, so the richness never bothered me!
Ok so I’m hanging out for the Vegan Version but also, what’s this? Soy Sweetened Condensed Milk? There is such a thing?? Girl where have I been living. Well ok, we both know the answer to this, but can you please tell me where I can find it????
I only found out about it a few months ago, and found a tin two weeks ago at a health food store here in Canberra, so we’ve both been living under the same rock I think
. I can’t decide what to make with it first, because it’s rather pricey…
You can order it online here!
http://crueltyfreeshop.com.au/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3_18_74&products_id=861
Wow, now that is one mouth-watering treat! I love all things caramel, so the photos alone have my sweet tooth going.
I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, however that may have played out for you- Even if it was just a normal day, I hope it was a good one!
Aw, thanks Hannah! “Thanksgiving” was just a normal day for me, but I think I spent some of it with my parents, so that was nice
I’ll definitely have to try the vegan version of this soon… then your sweet tooth could really get excited!
That looks so rich but so delicious!
It’s definitely both of those things! Which = goooood
Goodness this sounds and looks so amazing! I am in chocolate heaven even before eating it!
Thank you Priyanka! It does taste quite heavenly
Yay, a use for my newly-acquired golden syrup!
You hit the nail on the head, though, with the PB-addition idea…
(PS – check out what I just stumbled across: http://wanderingvegans.wordpress.com/2010/11/23/melbourne-vegan-eats-weekend/)
I think PB-addition ideas always hit the nail on the head
Yep, this is the recipe I was thinking of when I talked to you about golden syrup!
And thank you for the link! I wish I was in Melbourne long enough to explore all its vegan options… I’ll just have to go back soon
droooooool….peanutbutter caramel slice!!! I’m noe officially in peanut butter day dreaming mode.
I’m in that mode everyday… peanut butter makes everything better
Hannah my love! I just read your last post, which reminded me to comment here!
First off, you’re amazing and lovely!
Second, PLEASE make this for me again! I’m having a massive craving.
I can very much vouch for the deliciousness of this recipe!
Aw, Em, thank you! I love it when you comment
Do you really want more of this? Because I need to try a peanut butter version, I think. Are you up for that? 
Yes to the peanut butter!
Speaking of which, I’ve only eaten two of the mini Reese’s PB cups since I got that bag. TWO. How disciplined am I?
So that means 1.57kg to go?
Oh, life is going to be so good for the both of us for the next few weeks…
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