Crazy Pecan Toffee

Over the holidays in December my dear friend and fellow foodie, Mita, gave me a bag of her homemade confections as a holiday gift. Genna and I immediately scarfed most of the bag. Once I came up for air I asked about recipes...there were two different amazing preparations.
I have already posted about the dark chocolate bark, it's rich and studded with dried fruit & nuts !!

The other treat tasted of brown sugar, dark chocolate, salty pecans and a delightful crunch, but when I read the recipe from Mita's post, I just couldn't believe one of the ingredients...pretzels ?? Really ?? I have never been a fan of chocolate covered pretzels, in fact I would rather avoid most pretzels altogether.
Being the inquisitive and experimental cook that I am, I had to try making this version of toffee.
Mita touted it as a very simple recipe. She has tried to make my almond toffee (which uses a candy thermometer) with varying success.

She doesn't use just any pretzel, she recommended using this pretzel chip from Trader Joe's.
They are flat and very crunchy. When I gave my sister a sample of this toffee, between large bites, she mentioned that I could make some for her using her favorite Wheat Thins, that just might work too.

I can't quite call this stuff pretzel toffee so I have renamed it, Crazy Pecan Toffee.

Crazy Pecan Toffee

Ingredients

1 cup salted butter
1 cup brown sugar 
2 cups* TJ's pretzel slims or other salty cracker
2 cups semi sweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 cup chopped pecans
sea salt

*Enough to cover the bottom of a 9 by 13 inch pan with only slight overlapping.

1) Preheat your oven to 350 F. Cover the bottom of a 9 by 13 inch baking pan with foil, then cooking spray.

2) Cover the pan with a layer of pretzels or crackers.

3) Begin to melt the butter, then add the brown sugar and stir to combine. Once it starts to bubble, cook over medium high heat for 2 minutes.

4) Pour the caramel mixture over the pretzels trying to cover them as much as you can. Don't worry too much as once they are in the oven it will spread more.

5) Put the baking pan into the oven for 10 minutes.

6) Once it's out of the oven, let it sit for 1 minute, then gently cover with the 2 cups of semi sweet chocolate chips. Most the recipes I looked at claimed that 5 minutes on the hot toffee would melt the chocolate enough to spread it. I never found that to be true. Instead I turn off the oven and put the toffee with the chocolate on top, back in the cooling oven for 5 minutes. Then the chips melt enough to spread. Or you can melt them in the microwave instead.

7) Top with 1 1/2 cup of chopped pecans, carefully press the nuts into the soft chocolate.

8) Measure 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt into you hand, carefully sprinkle it on the toffee.

9) Allow to cool, break into chunks and then try not to eat all of it in one sitting !!

Note: A lot of the other recipes I looked at used a pan twice the size with the same amount of butter, sugar and chocolate. They also used mini pretzels. I like the fact that this is a thicker toffee with the pretzels becoming unrecognizable. These other recipes baked it for half the time at at higher temperature. Here is one of the recipes in case you want to try it.