Off-Campus Kitchen: Salted Caramel Brownies
In the wake of my first-ever academic conference and facing my looming thesis deadline, I’ve abandoned last week’s attempt at healthiness. Instead, I made the most decadent dessert on my mind: salted caramel brownies, entirely from scratch. And I do mean from scratch. It turns out that making your own caramel — starting with just sugar and water — is both easy and delicious. I’ll never buy caramel again.
Alternatively, use store-bought caramel or, for extra (thesis) crunch, peanut brittle. The brownie recipe comes from my mother, adapted as always. From-scratch brownies taste different than from-the-box. They turn out more cake-like, although homemade batter licked from a spoon is not as good as a from-the-box batter. That’s right, I acknowledged that some things are not always better when they’re made from scratch, but don’t expect it again.
For the caramel (if you don’t feel up to this, use packaged caramel. Step 1: Take off the packaging.)
2/3 cups sugar
6 teaspoons water
1 tablesoon butter
6 tablespoons heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon salt
1. Prepare a pan for cooling the caramel. I used a Tupperware container lined with foil, but I would recommend a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
2. Combine the sugar and water in a medium skillet over low heat, stirring to combine. It should form a thick paste, and it may seem that there’s too little water — that’s normal. Increase the heat slowly to medium, slowly tilting and rotating the pan to distribute the mixture as it heats. Do not stir!
3. After about five minutes, the mixture will begin to bubble. Keep rotating and tilting the pan for another few minutes until the mixture turns golden, then remove it from heat immediately.
4. Add butter and stir.
5. Add vanilla and salt, and stir.
6. Pour the caramel into prepared pan/container, and place in the freezer. It should take about two hours to harden, but may still be soft at that point.
Skillet cleaning tip: use boiling water to melt away/dissolve hardened caramel bits.
For the brownies:
6 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate
2 sticks butter
1-¼ cups sugar
1-1/3 cup flour
4 eggs
½ cup chopped nuts
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Microwave chocolate and butter in a bowl, stirring at 30-second increments, until the chocolate is melted.
2. Mix the eggs and sugar in a large bowl until smooth, adding flour afterwards. Add the chocolate mixture last, but make sure it has cooled enough so that it won’t cook the eggs.
3. Grease the pan and pour in half of batter. Add pieces of caramel and nuts if desired, then cover with rest of batter.
4. Bake for 30 minutes (depending on pan size and thickness of brownies) or until an inserted knife comes out clean. I served mine topped with a dollop of crème fraiche.