I went to a party last night and, not for the first time, I volunteered to make dessert. I’ve been dying to make Martha Stewart’s 100 Grande Cake which has layers of caramel and crisp puffed rice covered in dark chocolate in between 3 layers of dark dark chocolate cake. Delicious right? Well I will have to keep imagining that now ( I will make it soon i promise!) because when I woke up I got a call to go into work. Now I am not complaining about going into work, Lord knows I need to, but it does mean that my timeline was seriously diminished. A couple hours for cooling chocolate and icing a cake was now totally out of the picture. Enter the brownie.

A brownie shouldn’t take more then 15 minutes to prepare. I made a slightly more complicated brownie from the “Baked Explorations” book by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. Oh my goodness I love that book. This brownie has a layer of salted caramel in it that really makes it the fudgy-est darkest brownies I have probably ever known. The addition of sour cream also helps bring down the sweetness so you can taste the caramel without getting a toothache. I didn’t have a 9-13 inch pan so I made mine in a 11inch round pan and served it in slices with whipped creme fraiche ontop. Unfortunately there were a few drinks involved and I completely forgot to take a picture of it plated. So I do apologize.

Salted Caramel Brownies- Adapted by “Baked Explorations”

Salted Caramel

1 cup Sugar

2tbsp Corn Syrup

1/2cup heavy cream

1 tsp Salt (Fleur de Sel if you have it!)

1/4 cup Sour Cream

Brownie

1 1/4 cup AP Flour

1 tsp Salt

2 tbsp Dutched Cocoa Powder

11ounces Dark Chocolate

1 cup Butter

1 cup Sugar

1 cup Brown Sugar

5 Large Eggs

2 tsp Vanilla

1 tbsp Coffee

• Preheat oven to 350F
• Butter and flour a 10inch round cake pan

For Caramel:

• Combine sugar, corn syrup and 1/4cup water in a medium sized pot.
• Put on medium heat and stir until sugar has dissolved
• Stop stirring and bring heat up to high. Let caramelize until a deep amber color appears.
• Immediately take off heat and stir in cream. It will boil up so be careful!
• Add in sour cream and stir until combined. Put into a boil to cool

For Brownies

• Melt butter and chocolate over a double boiler
• Take off the heat but leave ontop of hot pot. Add in sugars and stir to combine
• Take off hot pot. Add in 3 eggs stir until barely combined then mix in the remaining 2. It will get cakey if you mix to much at this point.
• Stir in flour until just combined.
• Pour half of batter into prepared pan.
• Drizzle Caramel ontop. Use an offset spatular to spread it out.
• Spoon remaining brownie batter ontop and carefully smooth out top.
• Bake for 30 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out with only a few moist crumbs.
• Cool, cut, eat, enjoy!