Happy Fourth of July, everyone! I hope you got to spend some time with friends and family over some cookout food, s’mores, and fireworks- I know I sure did! My family enjoyed two days at our lake house this weekend, so I made some food to share. For the first day, I brought dessert: toffee saltine bars (I give credit to Pinterest for this recipe). For the second day, I made my Aunt Sadie’s baked beans. They’re a famous recipe among the family, and even though she couldn’t celebrate the Fourth with us, it didn’t seem right not to have her beans there. Here are the recipes for both dishes.

Toffee Saltine Bars

Ingredients:

• saltine crackers (about 1 sleeve)
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1 cup butter
• 1 package (~2 cups) chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a large baking sheet (~15×10″) with foil and spray with baking spray. Lay the saltines over the foil in a single layer.

In a pot, melt the butter and sugar together over medium heat until the mixture comes to a boil.

Turn the heat down to a simmer, and continue to stir the mixture for 5 minutes until the mixture thickens.

Turn off the heat. Pour the mixture over the saltines and spread into a thin layer.

Bake for 8-10 minutes. Let it rest for 3-5 minutes after baking, until the toffee begins to set. Then, sprinkle the chocolate chips over the top. The toffee will still be hot enough that the chocolate will melt and become spreadable. When it melts, spread chocolate into a thin layer, covering all the toffee.

Refrigerate until the chocolate is hardened. Finally, break the toffee bars into small pieces and refrigerate until you are ready to eat them! These were a huge hit at the family party, and I will definitely be making them again. On to the beans, now!

Aunt Sadie’s Baked Beans:

Ingredients:

• Two 15oz cans of pork and beans
• 3/4 cup light brown sugar
• 1 tbsp yellow mustard (the recipe calls for 1 tsp dry mustard, but Aunt Sadie wrote “I use regular mustard” next to this line- so regular mustard it is!)
• 6 slices bacon, chopped (I used 8)
• 1/2 cup ketchup

I will start by saying this was a bit of a trial run on the beans. I had never made them before, and Aunt Sadie’s recipe has a few edits that made the dish a little difficult to be specific with. They came out well, though, so all’s well that ends well! I suppose the easiest way for me to write this is to write her exact wording, and then put in my personal touches. Here goes:

“Preheat the oven to 325°F. Empty 1 can of the beans into a 1.5qt casserole dish. Combine brown sugar and mustard and sprinkle half over beans…”

Okay, first personal note. It is not easy to combine brown sugar and yellow mustard into a mixture that is easily sprinkled. It would make sense to use dry mustard as the original recipe called for to make a dry mixture, but Aunt Sadie says yellow mustard, so yellow mustard it shall be!

I tried it two different ways, one where I added the sugar and mustard separately, and one where I combined them and then added them. The combined sugar and mustard ended up being difficult to sprinkle, so I put the mixture in the dish with the beans and then just stirred it around. For sprinkling purposes, I am definitely an advocate for adding them separately! Here’s what it looked like separately:

I clearly wasn’t too worried about adding the exactly correct amount of mustard. I figure a good swirl did just fine. On to the next part of the recipe!

“Top with other can of beans and sprinkle with remaining brown sugar mixture, the chopped bacon, and ketchup.”

Again, highly recommend adding ingredients separately. With the bacon, Aunt Sadie writes that she only used about 4 slices. But c’mon, it’s bacon!! I doubled it and used 8 slices, chopped fine, and I have no regrets.

To finish off the dish, I swirled the ketchup over the top (again, not too concerned with the exact amount) and sprinkled the bacon over the top.

“Bake uncovered in slow oven (325 degrees) 2 1/2 hours.”

Easy enough!

I was really happy with how these turned out. As always, they were eaten up in no time, so I guess everyone else liked them, too! Thank goodness for old family recipes!

I hope you enjoy these recipes and that you get to use them at your next cookout! Happy baking!