Come the hour, come the time where one is compelled to shun righteous and elegant cookies and instead embrace slatternish recipes that involve several fully formed foods in their ingredients list. This happens roughly once every ten days, truth be told, and in this case, I acted upon this tawdry urge. Kind of: halfway through unwrapping individual Werthers Originals and slicing their squat, crystallised bodies into golden shards, I lost all energy to complete the cookie-rolling and waiting part of the transaction and certainly didn’t want to wish it upon anyone else; as such, what began as cookies became these Quadruple Crunch Bars instead; you still have to slice up lollies but it’s oddly satisfying, for what it’s worth.

Depending on what you classify quantitatively as an element of crunch-bearing properties the “Quadruple” part of the name might not be quite accurately indicative of what’s involved but I’m not getting paid — well, for anything here, but definitely not for my arcane mathematical knowledge, and while ‘quadruple’ looks tangibly dramatic, ‘quintuple’ seems coldly trivial. The main agents of crunch here are airy, puffy rice bubbles, the salty ridged remains of a bashed-up bag of chips both in and on the bars, and the aforementioned sliced-up toffees; not to encourage food that incorporates excess packaging per se, but it’s not the consumer’s fault that the consumerism is so fraught with debris.

As you might have guessed from said consumerism and name-brand dropping, this is based on an American recipe and it’s exactly the kind of nonsense you might expect from a book hailing from that direction; indeed, the toffee quantities were at least tripled in the original. The book that this came from is wonderful, though, don’t get me wrong — the King Arthur Baking Company Essential Cookie Companion, from whence I also found these incredible Joe Frogger cookies.

The cookie dough base adapts companionably to becoming a slice instead; clinging to and around the titular crunchy ingredients. It tastes remarkably toffeed, to say nothing of its texture — despite having plenty to compete with it’s also holding its own, and occupies a joyfully unidentifiable space between cookie and shortcake. The inclusion of potato chips, though nothing new in a sweeter context, might seem justifiably unorthodox to you, but their subtle flavour, brash, rippling texture and magnificently robust saltiness are excellent against the toffee-tinged biscuit base and, indeed, the toffees themselves; the combination suggesting the kind of children’s birthday party where every child is one gummy jube away from enacting stateless anarchy.

You possibly don’t need the added chocolate and extra chips but the sensation of one’s incisors shunting through crisp potato chips into barely-set chocolate is not to be overstated. Now, make no mistake, this slice is SILLY. And though the preposterous ingredients have the air of a toddler who has been allowed to pick their own clothes for the day; like that toddler there’s a curious benevolent dignity to the ridiculousness.

And you can’t get by on texture alone — if you could, I’d be writing recipes for bowls of sand and gravel. But no, the buttery, faintly caramelised flavour wreathed with salt and chocolate tastes incredible — I wouldn’t be telling you about it, otherwise. On top of which, it has briefly satiated my need to leap towards the kitchen and produce This Sort of Thing, though who knows which deranged direction my culinary whims will lead me next time.

If, however, you’ve read this and you’d prefer cookies that know what they are, I suggest the White Chocolate-Dipped Joe Froggers adapted from the same book, Nigella’s Granny Boyd’s Biscuits, or my pride and joy, these Lemon Feta Pistachio Cookies.

Quadruple Crunch Bars

Ridiculous and sublime with possibly incalculable different avenues of crunch. I cannot emphasise hard enough how much the quantities of chips, rice bubbles, and toffees are a guide only, please add more if you want. I’ve adapted this recipe from one in the King Arthur Baking Company Essential Cookie Companion book.

• 250g very soft butter
• 300g brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 300g plain flour
• 2 tablespoons milk of your choice
• 1 x 150g bag ready salted, ripple potato chips
• 60g rice bubbles (rice krispies for the Americans)
• 1 x 140g bag Werthers Originals or similar butter toffee candy
• 200g milk chocolate

1: Set your oven to 190C/370F and line a 25cm square tin — and I haven’t tried this in any other size — with baking paper. Beat the 250g soft butter and 300g brown sugar in a large bowl with a wooden spoon until light and creamy and thoroughly smashed into each other. Stir in the two teaspoons of vanilla extract and the half teaspoon each of baking soda and baking powder.

2: Fold in the 300g flour — you might as well sieve it if you have the energy — along with the two tablespoons of milk; it will seem like it’s never going to come together but keep stirring, carefully, and it will all make sense. At this point, open the bag of ready salted chips (to release air pressure) and press down or roughly yet carefully hit the bag against the bench or with a tin can or similar to crush the chips. Tip about 3/4 (around 100g) of the crushed chips into the mixing bowl, but don’t stir it yet. Reserve the remaining chip crumbs.

3: Tip the 60g rice bubbles into the mixing bowl next, and then somewhat painstakingly, unwrap each Werthers Original and use a heavy knife to chop each candy into four to six pieces — happily they’re easy to slice with just a little pressure. Work your way through all of them, then tip the toffee pieces into the mixing bowl, too. Carefully mix everything together, trying to get it so that all the mix-ins are just bound by or clinging to the mixture.

4: Tip this mixture into the 25cm square tin and press everything down evenly with the back of a spoon into one even-ish layer. Before you bake it, slice through the mixture as if you were preparing to serve it — I do two horizontal parallel lines and then several vertical parallel slices to create your bars — and then bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden on top and somewhat firmed. It will continue to firm up as it cools, which is what you should let it do once this time is up.

5: Once completely cooled, slice through your previously laid tracks again. Melt the 200g milk chocolate — either in the microwave in short bursts or in a heatproof bowl sitting over a pan of simmering water — and drizzle it generously over one side of the bars, letting it drop from your spoon hither and yon, and finally, scatter over the remaining crushed chips indiscriminately (but, I mean, aiming them at the melted chocolate so they’ll stick). I recommend transferring the slices to a baking paper lined tray, spreading them out slightly, and drizzling chocolate on two or three at a time before sprinkling with the crushed chips.

Makes around 15 good-sized pieces, depending on how you slice it. Store in an airtight container in the fridge, ideally.

Note: If you can’t fathom, find, or deal with the Werthers Originals you could replace them with about 70g chopped pecans. You can also use whichever chocolate you’d prefer for drizzling over at the end.

music lately:

First Love/Late Spring by Mitski; something in the cadence of the “one word from you” part is so deliciously ominous, like you’re being serenaded by kind yet firm ghosts in a haunted castle; they’re not outwardly hostile but they’ve got a job to do! Simply cannot imagine a day where I could write something normal about a Mitski song, to be honest with you.

Don’t Make Fun of Daddy’s Voice by Morrissey as performed live at Earl’s Court, look, I know he’s appalling but I can’t retroactively make his music suck or mean less to me; all I can do is add a loud and disapproving disclaimer when I do mention it. I had the kind of day that can only be improved by dancing aggressively to this specific song, it helped a little but I’m taking the credit for it.

Spiritual Eternal by Alice Coltrane, every time I hear this it feels like experiencing sunshine, conceptually, for the first time, it’s the kind of thing that gives your ears a reason to wake up in the morning; it really is both spiritual and eternal, she could not have picked a more demonstrably factual name.

PS: As I’ve said previously, ReliefAid’s Gaza Appeal is important to me and based on current donations they’ve delivered 3000+ litres of water into Gaza and distributed food to 2600+ people specifically in Rafah. Their team, though in dire circumstances, are doing real, helpful work on the ground. If you’re looking for relief effort to support, I suggest them as a starting point.