Oddly enough, I don't love sweets. I was that child that came back after a night of trick-or-treating, flushed face with my pumpkin bag in hand, dumped out all my candy on to the living room floor, and just started at it. After about 3 minutes of staring in awe at my bounty, the fun began: I methodically organized and reorganized my candies. Biggest to smallest, most delicious to least delicious, brand, those that contain nuts, those with the same color wrapping paper! I repeated this over and over until I found a pattern that suited me for that year. Then, I would slowly pack up my candy, back into my pumpkin bag, and put it away. Throughout the year, I would pull out the bag, like a little hoarder in training, and look at my candy. Not eat it, look at it. My parents must have found this behavior decidedly odd, and knew that I would probably grow up to be pretty awkward, but they went with the flow and ended up recycling my old candy as next years Halloween candy. I've been green from a young age.
In college, my best friend would stare at me in wonder when she saw that I still had snickers bars from the beginning of the year from the care package my mom sent me--and then promptly relieve me of those candy bars. Now, my husband rolls his eyes every time I get a new chocolate bar, because he knows that I'm going to eat about three bites and leave the rest in the fridge for the next year or so.
What can I say? I'm like a small dog with sweets, I'm interested for a short period of time, and then I forget about it...I just don't like things that are too sweet. But, I have an overwhelming urge to make desserts, especially those that toe that line between too sweet and perfect. These brownies most definitely fall into the perfect category.We had a little bit of heavy whipping cream sitting around so I decided I wanted to make salted caramel sauce with...which turned into straight up salted caramels...which turned into salted caramel brownies, a the ultimate trifecta of awesome. Sounds like they'd be hard and time consuming, but I promise you they're not. I don't love sweets, but I definitely love these brownies...not too sweet, with just the right touch of chocolate and salt mixed in.
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| The best picture I could get before we ate them! |
Salted Caramel Brownies
Recipe straight from smittenkitchen.com
Caramel
0.5 cup granulated sugar
4 tbsp butter
3 tbsp. heavy cream
0.25 heaped tsp. salt
Brownies
3 oz. unsweetened chocolate
1 stick butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
0.25 tsp salt
0.67 cup all purpose flour
This sounds like it would be hard, or like it would take a long time. Rest assured, I can promise you neither of those things are true. First make the caramel:
Caramel -- get your ingredients together, and a medium sautepan. Put the sugar in by itself and turn the heat to medium. Mix the sugar around with a wooden or metal spatula and you'll see it begin to melt. When it's melted entirely, take it off the heat, and stir in the butter. It'll start to bubble, but that's okay, just keep stirring. Then add in the salt, and heavy cream, and put it back on the burner over medium-low heat. When it turns a golden brown color, you're done. Pour it into a pan lined with non-stick sprayed parchment paper and stick it in the freezer for 45 minutes. When it's done, you can shatter/cut it.
Brownie batter -- Preheat your oven to 350. melt the chocolate and butter over a double boiler. When it's melted and stirred together, add the sugar and mix well. Then add the 2 eggs, vanilla, salt and mix together. Then add the flour about 1-2 tbsp at a time, mixing to make sure it incorporated. Then you take about 1/2 the caramel pieces and mix it into the batter. Pour the batter into a non-stick sprayed pan. Put the rest of the caramel pieces on top. Pop it in the oven for about 25-30 minutes, pull it out, let it cool, and you're done!
If you want a darker flavor for the caramel, you can let it go a little darker, but be careful because otherwise the sugar can burn and taste bitter!
Enjoy!
