Salted Caramel Brownies

With a name like "Salted Caramel Brownie", I think we can let the brownie do the talking.  This whole "salty sweet" dessert movement is something I am happy to throw my weight behind.  I had my first salted chocolate about 3 years ago and haven't looked back.

The quest for a good Salted Caramel Brownie recipe started back at Christmas-time...it only took me about 8 months to finally get to making these little buggers.  I am really glad that I took a little time with these and made a couple different caramels to get just the right topping that I had in my head.  Life's too short to spend time eating "meh" desserts.

Now that's the stuff...

Flick and I are dessert-a-holics (Ellie is one in the making) and I love to bake so we are not wired to skip the sweets in our house.  I follow a blog authored by Nicole DeBoom, the founder of Skirt Sports (a pretty rad women's athletic company if you have a chance to check them out...), and she recently posted about her newly hatched fitness motivation: "Dessert Challenge".  Doesn't that sound like something worth undertaking?  The long and short of it is, as a working mom with a crazy busy schedule, she is using dessert as a "carrot" to help motivate her daily workout. 

As most of you know, not only do I love to bake, but I am an outdoor junky - get me on a bike, running on a trail, in a pool, or strapped into a pair of skis and you have one happy mama.  That being said, it isn't always easy to work up the energy or motivation to get out there when sleep is in short order, work is super busy, and the to-do list at home is taking on a life of its own.  My spin on the Dessert Challenge: I make the time to get outside and be active, I then treat myself to dessert at night, which means I get to bake more so that we have sweets (a.k.a.: motivation) around the house.  Triple win.  Endorphins, deliciousness, and making time for my hobbies - bring it!

 I know you are really here for the recipe so here you go.  The brownies are really easy to make (one bowl) and while they are baking, you can work on the caramel so the total time invested really isn't too bad...and they are pretty rich so they can last awhile too (try freezing for even more longevity)!

Salted Caramel Brownies

Brownies (adapted for 5,000ft - sea level adjustments are in parentheses)
recipe courtesy of "Pie in the Sky"

1/2 cup dutch process cocoa
1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon all purpose flour (1/2 cup at sea level)
1 cup minus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar (1 cup at sea level)
1/4 teaspoon salt (1/8 teaspoon at sea level)
3 large eggs (2 eggs at sea level)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, melted and cooled (6 tablespoons at sea level)
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips or 6 oz coarsely chopped chocolate

Coat an 8 inch square baking pan with butter (I usually take a cold stick out of the fridge, unwrap the end and rub it all over the bottom and sides of the pan).  Preheat the oven to 375 degrees (325 degrees at sea-level).

In a large bowl, whisk together the cocoa, flour, sugar and salt.  Make a well in the middle and add in the eggs, vanilla, and melted/cooled butter.

Whisk together the wet ingredients and then begin to work in the dry ingredients.  Add the chocolate chips and using a large spoon, stir/mix until everything is well incorporated.  The batter will be thick.

Scoop the batter into the greased pan and bake for about 30 min (35 min at sea level).  This will be very dependent on your oven so you will have to use some judgement.  The brownies will look dry on top and will start to pull away from the sides.  A cake tester or toothpick should have some moist crumbs on it (it shouldn't "jiggle" like jello when you take it out).  We tend to have to cook longer in our oven so if yours is a hot one, keep this in mind.

Cool the brownies in the pan on a wire rack.

Salted Caramel
recipe courtesy of sally'sbakingaddiction

1 cup granulated sugar
6 tablespoons of butter (cut into 6 pieces, 1 tablespoon each)
1/2 cup heavy cream (or whipping cream)
1 teaspoon salt

Heat granulated sugar in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly with a rubber spatula (so it doesn't stick as much).  The sugar will get clumpy and darken and will turn into a syrupy, amber colored liquid.  Keep stirring until it is all melted in, being careful not to burn the sugar.

Once sugar is melted, add the butter - the caramel will bubble up once the butter is added, stir it into the caramel until the butter is melted (2-3 min).

Slowly drizzle in the heavy cream to the butter/sugar mixture.  Again, it will bubble up - keep an eye on it and stir/let boil for about a minute.

Remove from the heat and stir in the salt.  Allow to cool down.

To pull it all together, take the cooled caramel and drizzle it over the cooled brownies.  Use as much or as little as you like.  The extra caramel can be stored in a sealed container in the fridge for other uses...

The caramel will stay gooey - if you want it more firm, keep the brownies in the fridge (this is what we did).  I took some of them to work where they were quickly polished off and Flick and I managed to get through the rest of them.  Tough job, but someone's gotta do it.

Thank goodness for Thanksgiving

We are going to cut to the chase pretty quickly here since we have a lot of material to cover.  Thanksgiving is officially over, the turkey has been consumed, pies have been polished off, and plenty of wine has been imbibed.  All in all I would say it was a pretty successful holiday.

We started our Thanksgiving with a self-governed Turkey Trot.  A nice 3.4 mile jog on the trails out near our home.  It was a beautiful morning to have everyone out and about and there were tons of other people working up their appetites along with us.  We came home and had some french toast and started pulling everything together.

The dinner assembly started on Tuesday night.  The key to these multiple dish dinner events is to get as much prep work done ahead of time as possible.  We laid out the menu and figured out what could be made ahead of time, and what would be best served up fresh from the oven.  Here is our menu:  



Turkey
Mashed Potatoes
Rosemary Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Shallots
Green Beans
Pecan Rolls
Cranberry Apple Relish
Pear and Candied Walnut Salad
Memere's Stuffing
Applejack Spiked Hot Cider
Apple Pie
Pumpkin Pie
Mud Pie



There were 6 of us (plus Ellie) for dinner.  This may seem like an aggressive line-up, however, who wants a Thanksgiving dinner with no leftovers? Not this girl.  The make-way-ahead dishes were the Cranberry Sauce and the Mud Pie.

This was a new Cranberry Sauce for us but has definitely earned its place in the regular rotation.  It was so simple and had such great flavor.  We made it 2 days before Thanksgiving and it was all ready to go come dinnertime on Thursday night.

Mud Pie is officially part of our Thanksgiving pie tradition because it is Flick's favorite.  What is not to like about an Oreo crust filled with coffee ice cream and a fudge topping?  You can sub in other types of ice cream (mint chocolate chip and caramel jump out as good options) - but the coffee is the big winner in our household.  Since we had 3 pies in queue, we ended up making this in a non-stick cake pan and it worked out great.

The day before Thanksgiving we started in on the rest of the pies and half of the stuffing.  The stuffing literally cooks all day long, and is SO worth it.  This is the best stuffing ever, we just love it.  This is my Memere's stuffing recipe so it has been in the family for awhile and continues to go strong on the Thanksgiving table.  For the apple pie - we used the food processor with the "slicing" adapter to significantly cut down on the prep time. 





The pumpkin pie was pretty straightforward.  Even though it only requires a single, bottom crust, we made a double crust so that we were sure to have plenty of crust for our slightly large (9 1/2 inch) pie plate.  Mind you, this was determined after we tried with just a single crust and it didn't fit :)  This is why starting early is key!

Allie was in charge of making the Applejack Spiked Hot Cider on Thanksgiving day and it was a big hit.  This is something that you can assemble on the stovetop and leave simmering in the crockpot all day to fill your house with the aroma of hot cider, cinnamon, and cloves.

The turkey is done!

My mom started up the second batch of stuffing just before lunch so it could cook for a full 6 hours on the double boiler.  We were shooting to eat dinner around 5pm so we got our 18 pound turkey in the oven around 1:15.  We cook our turkey in a bag like this one; it cuts down on the cooking time and keeps the bird from drying out too much.  We just used the recipe that came with the oven bag and the flavor and juiciness was perfect.  Our turkey took longer than anticipated (it was still pretty cold and slightly icy when I put it in the oven) so we didn't end up eating until about 6pm, but as everyone kept reminding me, it's not that big of a deal to wait a little while longer for a delicious meal.  Tough to swallow as the chef, but it was definitely worth the wait.

While the turkey was in the oven, we made the mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes.  Our pecan rolls needed to bake for 15-20 minutes so we had to wait for the bird to come out of the oven before we could cook them.  The rolls suffered the most from the longer cooking time on the Turkey; they had risen to their full potential by the time the bird was supposed to be ready, and subsequently deflated while the Turkey was hanging in the oven.  They still tasted delicious and were a popular side on the table.

The salad and the green beans were really easy to whip together in the last few minutes before dinner.  I made the dressing and candied walnuts earlier in the morning and just had to slice the pears and toss the lettuce at crunch time.  We kept the green beans simple (just steamed them) so they were really easy to rinse, snap, and steam.

Candied walnuts for the salad

All in all it was an awesome meal with our family and it was fun and only slightly stressful to put it all together.  Remember that table that we ordered awhile back?  Well, it hasn't arrived yet so we made do with our current table and fit just fine.  All the food hung out on a foldable card table and people were free to get up and refill their plates as needed.  What a great holiday!  We have taken down the Halloween/Thanksgiving decorations, Flick went and bought some Christmas lights, and we are working our way into full on Ho Ho Holiday mode :)  I am a total dork this time of year and am so excited for upcoming Christmas's as Ellie gets more and more into the festivities.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone, I hope you all enjoyed a fabulous meal with your family and friends! 

The All American Blueberry Muffin - Bonus Recipe

Once summer was in full swing back in Connecticut, my mom used to pack us girls up into the car to go strawberry and blueberry picking with my Memere and Pepere.  Needless to say we LOVED everything about these trips - from hanging out at our Grandparent's house to sneaking pounds of freshly picked berries as payment for our efforts.  I am serious about "pounds" and use the term "sneaking" very loosely...if you have ever eaten dessert with me, you know what I'm talking about:

Mom, I am pretty sure Christa ate that chocolate cake...

My mom used to say that they were going to need to weigh us on the way in and the way out of the fields to account for all the fruit we ate while picking.  I can think of worse things to be loading up on!

I have yet to come across a "pick your own berry" farm out here in Colorado.  These days we settle for expensive quarts and pints of berries at the supermarket which definitely do the trick - but nothing beats fruit fresh from the fields.  I guess I better get on planning that garden for next year!

On a recent trip to the grocery store I bought an enormous bag of frozen blueberries (for about 1 million dollars).  On my first Mother's day all I really wanted were blueberry pancakes.  My body knows no limit when it comes to blueberry pancakes - like pizza, cereal, and ice cream, I could eat them all day long and that "you are full" filter would never kick in.  It is a problem.  The great thing about an extra large bag of blueberries is that once the pancake batter runs out, you can whip up a batch of blueberry muffins.  I made these muffins for dessert one night when we realized we were deficient in the sweets department.  They are really quick to pull together and they make the house smell amazing as they come out of the oven.  Fresh is always best, but once they are completely cool, if you wrap them individually in wax paper and put them in freezer bags, you can enjoy them a few weeks later and they are just as good!  We have pulled out frozen muffins for quick snacks in the morning before heading up skiing or off to work and it is always nice to know you have something good on hand.  I didn't get the greatest picture of them (it was kind of late and our kitchen lighting leaves a lot to be desired), but they certainly disappeared quickly in our house!

Bonus - Dessert!

I thoroughly enjoy cooking - but when it comes to the kitchen, may heart really lies in a homemade apple pie or a plate of fresh from the oven chocolate chip cookies.  Baking is my culinary passion.  I know that it may not seem as creative as cooking (what with all the precise measuring that takes place), but since when has someone been forced to sit at the table for an hour, staring down a brownie because they couldn't leave until they finished their dessert.  Never.  Fresh baked goods make people happy and I love to see someones face light up over a batch of cookies, warm banana bread, or fruity cobbler; and to know that I made that person happy...well that makes me feel pretty darn good too.

Here are two recipes to get the dessert section of the blog started up.  We'll start with the classic chocolate chip cookie.  These are always number one requests from my Dad and from Flick (so he is probably happy that there is a batch kicking around the house right now).  My tricks are to use Crisco instead of butter, refrigerate the dough, and spoon them out using a half-tablespoon (bet you didn't even know they had those out there!).  I think that I'll go have one now as a matter of fact...

Next is an apple coffee cake that is nice for both brunch and dessert.  I have made this twice so far and gotten rave reviews both times so I am considering it a keeper.

Hope this tides you over for awhile - just to note: for those of you baking below 5,000 ft, these recipes are all adjusted for baking at altitude.  I am not sure what they will do unaltered at a lower elevation but I will include the "low altitude" adjustments whenever possible.  Now that is a change of pace!