Salted Caramel Brownies

Salted caramel may be one of my new favourite things. I’m not typically a huge caramel fan, but there’s something different about salted caramel that makes it so much nicer than standard caramel. Since I tried out some very nice salted caramel brownies at Hawker House in February (along with a delicious whiskey & marmalade concoction), it’s been something I’ve been meaning to make for a while now. The thought of making caramel from scratch kept putting me off.. I’ve done it before, but it took 3 attempts, a lot of sugar and a burnt finger before I managed it! Cue Whole Foods.. I had some time to spare and went in to have a browse, ended up spotting a jar of salted dulce de leche for about £2.40 and picked it up.

I used my standard brownie recipe and decided to put the salted caramel in between two layers of brownie mixture and added a little extra on top as a finishing touch. Of course, you can always make the caramel from scratch if you can’t get hold of dulce de leche and add a little salt to taste.

Recipe as follows:

200g dark chocolate (I used 70% cocoa solids)
175g unsalted butter
315g caster sugar
130g plain flour
3 eggs
125g salted caramel (dulce de leche)

Should make 12 – 16 brownies

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees and line a baking tray with parchment paper. I think the optimal size for this recipe is a 30x23x5cm tray. I ended up using a pyrex glass dish that was a little smaller than this size (so had fewer brownies at the end of it!)

2. Place chocolate and butter in a glass bowl, over a saucepan of boiling water (don’t let the bowl & water touch). Stir until melted.

3. Once melted, add sugar and mix in. Then, sift in flour and combine well. Add the eggs one at a time making sure they everything is properly combined.

4. Pour half the brownie mixture into the tray, spreading evenly. Then, add salted caramel to this layer – it’ll be quite thick so won’t spread easily. Instead, use a knife (or chopstick in my case!) and swirl it around, spreading across as much of the mix as you can so you get as much caramel in each brownie as possible.

5. Carefully pour the rest of the brownie mixture over the top and add more salted caramel if you wish. You can always add walnuts or pecans if you want fancy a nutty version!