Gooey Rolo® Blondies

I love Rolo® candies. I mean, they're small, sweet, chewy, and come in cute little gold foil wrappers... What more could you ask for? Oh, right, a dessert MADE with Rolo®! I found this simple recipe a little while back and saved it.

I was reluctant to change anything about it, but I couldn't help but wonder if the caramel in the candies would be enough. So I decided to experiment by drizzling some caramel on top of the confection once it was finished.

Here's what you need:

1 (18.25 oz.) box yellow or white cake mix
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted
5 oz. evaporated milk
45 Rolo® candies, unwrapped and cut in half
Caramel dessert topping

First thing's first: a bit of prep work. Unwrap each of the 45 Rolo® candies and carefully cut them in half. Since it was a bit warm in my apartment, after I was done with this step, I placed the bowl of candies in the fridge. By the way, the bag of Rolo® I got had 55 candies in it, so you COULD use all of them. But hey, I don't mind having a few extra around. ;)

Next preheat the oven to 350ᵒF and grease a 13"x9" baking pan with cooking/baking spray. (Using foil to line the pan is my personal preference. It can make it a lot easier to get the confection out of the pan when it's done in that you can carefully lift the entire thing out by the foil and then cut into bars outside the pan.)

Combine the cake mix, melted butter, and evaporated milk in your mixing bowl.

Mix it up on low speed until the batter is nicely combined, stopping to scrape the bowl and paddle as needed.

Cut the dough in half using a rubber spatula.

Spread half of the dough in the bottom of your prepared 13"x9" pan. It's super sticky and difficult to spread, so I ended up spraying my rubber spatula with cooking spray and used it to spread the batter, going back to cover up holes in the layer as needed.

Bake for about 6-8 minutes, just until the bottom layer is set. Then remove the pan from the oven and place the Rolo® candies caramel-side down all over the hot baked layer.

Then (this part was a little tricky for me) place little dollops or small spoonfuls of the remaining dough all over the candies. Don't worry about spreading this layer like the bottom one. Just cover as best as you can.

Then bake for about 18-20 more minutes. It will be golden brown.

And, if desired, drizzle some caramel dessert topping over the entire thing. Mmm!

Now that's some sweet stuff. ;)

I followed the baking directions from the original recipe when I made this batch (8 minutes, then 20 minutes), but I think it may have been just a little overdone. After all, when the bars sit in the hot pan after you take it out of the oven, it continues baking for a little bit. So, the time ranges that I gave above are slightly altered. If you give this recipe a try, let me know how it turns out! =)

Your Cupcake,

~Jesia <3