Meet The #1 Cookie For Cookie Exchange

Made in minutes, these graham cracker caramel nut cookies are ridiculously delicious. Share them with friends and they’ll want the recipe—guaranteed!

SLAM DUNK | The next time you are asked to bring cookies to a book club, meet-up or exchange, try making the ones pictured here. After their taste, which is amazing, the fabulous thing about these caramel-covered slabs is their pan-generational appeal: sophisticated enough to seduce discriminating adults and gooey-good enough to reel in the children.

Teresa Syrnyk, a supertalented amateur cook, has been making these quick cookies, what she calls her “deadly graham cracker caramel nut jobs,” since her now-adult kids were small. She can’t remember where she first spotted the recipe—“maybe an old Best of Bridge or Betty Crocker, something like that—one of those cookbooks from the good old days when we didn’t worry so much about the nutritional benefit of every single thing and we all ate crap with gusto.”

These cookies may not offer a lot of dietary value, but they’ll do wonders for your taste buds—not to mention your sweet soul.

Graham Cracker Caramel Nut Jobs

Makes 32 cookies

1 box graham crackers (NOT low fat; use one row from the box)
1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1 cup sliced almonds

Preheat oven to 350. Use vegetable oil to lightly oil or spray a jelly roll pan (13 1/2” X 17 1/2”) or cookie sheet. Lay the graham crackers out in a tile pattern, trimming to fit the pan.

Heat butter and brown sugar together in a heavy-bottomed saucepan on medium heat for 5 minutes to make the caramel (do not allow mixture to boil rapidly).

Pour the caramel mixture evenly over the crackers, spreading it everywhere, even corners, with an offset knife. Sprinkle evenly with the nuts.

Bake in oven for 7 minutes. Turn the oven off and leave the door open and wait for the cookies to stop heaving and bubbling. Remove cookies from the oven and let them cool (I have burnt my tongue by tasting too soon).

Cut into squares along the ready-made cracker guidelines. —Carolann Rule

Photo: Doris Cheung