Caramel Oat Chocolate Chunk Shortbread Bars

Atmospheric river forecast. Three days of rain. Amazon this week. Sprint planning Tuesday. Two hours of meetings I could have been a Slack message.

Hana, 1, a small loud animal. She mostly eats rice and bananas. Jisoo FaceTimed Tuesday. We made doenjang jjigae together — me in Wallingford, her in Haeundae. Eleven thousand miles. The same soup.

Sundubu jjigae. Soft tofu, kimchi, gochujang, raw egg cracked in at the end. The Saturday night standard.

Drove to Bellevue Saturday. Karen was tired. I brought soft food. She ate.

The kimchi crock was bubbling. The fermentation was the fermentation.

The Capitol Hill apartment kitchen is small. We make it work.

Jisoo sent a photo of the dol the kids did for our visit last summer. The photo went on the fridge.

James and I had date night Friday. Indian restaurant on 45th. We ate too much. We sat in the car after talking about nothing for an hour. The marriage is the marriage.

Sprint review at Amazon Friday. Two hours. I could have been on a podcast.

Therapy Tuesday with Dr. Kim. We talked about the parents — the two sets, the one living, the one gone, the one who became real after thirty years and the one who was real my whole life and is now gone. The work is the layered work.

David came over for Sunday dinner. He brought some tomatoes from the Bellevue garden.

I sat at the kitchen counter at six AM with a notebook and a cup of green tea. Writing time before the house wakes. The pre-light hour is the only writing hour I trust.

My Korean is improving. Slowly. Painfully. Conversationally adequate now. I can argue about kimchi proportions in two languages, which is a milestone in any marriage between mother and daughter.

Rain on the porch all afternoon Saturday. The Wallingford rain is its own weather. I sat with a book and a tea and did not move for two hours.

I texted Jisoo a photo of the kimchi in the new onggi pot. She replied with the thumb-up emoji and a Korean-language critique. The duality is the gift.

Reading at night. A novel by a Korean-American writer about a family in 1990s LA. I underlined four sentences. The underlining is the marking-of-the-territory of the soul.

The shiso on the south fence is fragrant and unruly. I brushed past it taking the compost out and the smell stopped me. The smell is the country. The smell is Jisoo's apartment.

I made coffee at seven. Hana ate cereal at seven-fifteen. Min wandered down at seven-twenty-five. James left for work at eight. The morning was the morning. The standard.

Sunday farmers market on Wallingford Avenue. The kabocha at the Asian vendor's stall. The shishito peppers. The brokered conversation. We bought too much. We always do.

Hana left a Lego on the kitchen floor. I stepped on it at two AM. Standard.

Yoga Tuesday morning at the studio. The forward fold released something I had been carrying in the shoulder. The mat is the mat.

I read a thread on the Korean Adoptee subreddit Saturday. Some posts brought up old anger. Most are people figuring it out in real time. We are not unique. We are a community.

A blog reader wrote about her own adoptee experience. We exchanged three emails this week.

The kimchi crock was bubbling Saturday morning when I checked. The bubbling is the right bubbling. The fermentation knew what it was doing.

The newsletter went out Sunday morning. The opening sentence took an hour. The piece took five. The piece was what it needed to be.

I drove to Bellevue Saturday with soft food in the passenger seat, and these bars were part of it — buttery and chewy and sweet in the way that requires almost no explanation when you hand them to someone who is tired. Karen ate. That felt like enough. The rain came down all afternoon and I had the kitchen to myself for an hour before Hana woke up, and this is the kind of baking that asks very little of you and gives a lot back: one bowl, a pan, the smell of caramel browning while the kimchi crock does its own quiet work on the counter nearby.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 30 min | Total Time: 50 min | Servings: 16 bars

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks / 227g) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chunks or chopped dark chocolate
3/4 cup soft caramel candies (about 20 caramels), roughly chopped, or 1/2 cup good-quality caramel sauce
Flaky sea salt, for topping

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C). Line a 9x13-inch baking pan with parchment paper, leaving an overhang on the sides for easy removal. Lightly grease the parchment.
Cream butter and sugars. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together with a hand mixer or stand mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the vanilla extract and sea salt and mix to combine.
Add dry ingredients. Add the flour, rolled oats, and baking soda to the butter mixture. Mix on low speed until a thick, crumbly dough forms. It should hold together when pressed between your fingers.
Press and layer. Press about two-thirds of the oat dough evenly into the bottom of the prepared pan to form the base layer. Scatter the chocolate chunks evenly over the base. Drop the caramel pieces (or drizzle the caramel sauce) evenly over the chocolate.
Add the top layer. Crumble the remaining oat dough over the caramel and chocolate layer. It does not need to be a solid crust — gaps are welcome and will let the caramel bubble through beautifully.
Bake. Bake for 28–32 minutes, until the top is golden and the caramel is bubbling at the edges. The center may look slightly underdone; it will firm up as it cools.
Finish and cool. Remove from the oven and immediately sprinkle with flaky sea salt. Let the bars cool completely in the pan on a wire rack — at least 1 hour — before lifting out using the parchment overhang and cutting into 16 bars.

Nutrition (per serving)

Caramel Oat Chocolate Chunk Shortbread Bars — Something Sweet for a Rainy Saturday in Wallingford