You need to make this Salted Chai Caramel Slice for Christmas.

This week has been a good week.

Simply because it was my birthday on Sunday!!
I really can't keep track of how old I am anymore.
All I know is that my Miss 5 goes "WOW!" when I tell her how old I am.

It was good because I got to meet up with LOTS of friends over separate occasions over this week.
And it was really special celebrating an old uni friend's engagement with the rest of the crazy bunch.
One good way of feeling old is getting together with uni friends and seeing the good, bad and the ugly videos we had of all those roadtrips we had together!!!!
Gosh.

Well. That was my weekend.
How was yours?
I do hope you had a lovely one.
I've spied a few lovely Christmas trees going up!
I do love Christmas.

I baked this last Friday and it was ABSOLUTELY delicious.
Even my hubby who is not a Chai-fan agreed that it was good!
It is the Ultimate Salted Chai Caramel Slice that converts even Chai-haters!
I do like how subtle the chai flavour is, but yet at the same time, it goes so well with the salted caramel.
And I do like sharing the calories!

I found the original recipe off the Taste website a while ago in one of the forums but it was called Salted Caramel Slice. 

Salted Chai Caramel Slice
BASE
¾ cup plain flour
½ cup brown sugar
120g unsalted butter, chopped
½ tsp ground cinnamon

FILLING 
50g unsalted butter, chopped
¼ cup golden syrup
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 stick cinnamon
½ tsp ground cloves
1 Earl Grey tea bag
395g can condensed milk

TOPPING
220g dark chocolate
30g unsalted butter
1 tsp salt flakes

1 Preheat oven to 160’C. Line base of a 20cm square tin with baking paper
2 Put flour, sugar, butter and cinnamon in a food processor and process until combined.* Press mixture evenly into prepared pan. Smooth surface and bake for 14-16min or until lightly golden. 
3 To make filling, put butter, golden syrup, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and tea bag in a small saucepan over a medium heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until butter has melted. Gradually bring to the boil and cook for 1 min. Remove and discard tea bag.
4 Add condensed milk to pan and cook, stirring, for 2-3 min or until mixture has thickened and slightly darkened. Remove cinnamon from pan and discard. Pour mixture over base. Bake for 8-10 min or until bubbling and lightly golden. Remove from heat. Set aside to cool until caramel is firm.
5 To make topping, put chocolate and butter in a large heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water and heat until almost melted. Remove from heat, then stir until smooth. Spoon topping over filling, smoothing surface with back of spoon.
6 Sprinkle salt flakes** over topping, then refrigerate for at least 4 hrs or until set. Cut slice into thin wedges and serve.

*I'm not a big fan of food processors, so this time, I just made sure my butter was slightly melted and mixed it with the rest of the flour, sugar and cinnamon in my cake mixer. Base turned out fine. 
** I highly recommend sea salt flakes. So much more OOMPH! 

And of course me being me, I forgot to take any decent photos of it so this is it below, next to some also very yummy Chocolate Balls I made.

Enjoy :) xx