Salted Caramel Brownies

One of my favourite annual challenges is doing cake for 65 people, which is either a fabulous opportunity to try new things, or a panic-inducing welter of sugar and chocolate!   Choosing the former, I thought I'd try adapting my favourite Brownie recipe with some salted caramel.   Granted, the cake-eaters had been suffering death by PowerPoint all day, but these Brownies really went down fast!    The recipe is  fabulously easy, especially as you can buy the caramel in tins, and the result is a squishy, life-affirming chocolately accompaniment to even the worst cup of Army tea in the world....  Photos don't do chocolate justice - maybe we need a return to scratch and smell??

Salted Caramel Chocolate Brownies

Salted Caramel Chocolate Brownies

4oz/110g plain chocolate

5oz/140g butter

4 ½ oz/125g plain flour (or rice flour)

½ oz/15g cocoa powder

½ tsp baking powder

5oz/140g soft muscovado sugar

1 pinch salt plus extra sea salt

2 eggs

1 tin (375g) Carnation Caramel (or similar)

Preheat oven to 180 deg C, and line a baking tin (9” square, or oblong tin depending if you want the brownies thinner or thicker!) with non-stick baking parchment. 

Melt the chocolate and butter in the microwave, stir the chocolate into the butter so it all mixes together (it is better to under-heat the chocolate and stir out the lumps using the residual heat in the butter).  

Sieve the flour, salt, cocoa and baking powder together.    In a separate large bowl, beat the eggs, adding the sugar.  Mix until just combined (this gives the best brownie texture).   Fold the melted chocolate into the beaten egg mix, then add the flour. 

Spread half the mixture into the tin.  Mix the caramel with a good pinch of salt flakes so that the texture breaks up a bit and it is easier to spread over the chocolate mixture.  Pour over the rest of the chocolate.  Take a knife and swirl it all around – not so much that you lose the stripes, but just so it isn’t perfectly regular.  Resist the temptation to lick the knife.  Sprinkle on another pinch of salt flakes.  Cook for up to 25 minutes, but it should still be soggy – the mixture will rise in the tin, but it is better that it is undercooked rather than solid.    Cut into squares when cool, if you can wait that long!