Salted Dulce De Leche Brownies

Yes, I know I'm obsessed with salted caramel, but I can't help it!!!!

These little treasures are a hybrid of two recipes.  The first is David Lebovitz's oven baked Dulce De Leche (recipe can be found here) which I also use for my ice cream found here.  Without turning my little blog in to a David Lebovitz shrine, I must say I can not speak highly enough of his recipes!!!  If you are a keen ice cream maker, or want to be, you must check out his blog and his book "The Perfect Scoop". My absolute favourite (so far!) is his Butterscotch Pecan Ice Cream - AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!  Anyway, back to brownies for now...

David has a recipe for dulce de leche brownies which you can find here. I made them once and they are dark and divine!  I, however, am quite partial to a "trashy brownie"!  By this I mean one that is less dark and a bit more sweet and a bit chewier and gooier!

So, for my actual brownie recipe, I used this one as a basis.  I really like this recipe and it was different to other brownies I've made before. Especially creaming the butter rather than melting it.  I changed the recipe a bit, mostly the chocolate components, so I will outline my version below, but purists, please feel free to go directly to the source for an excellent brownie!

Salted Dulce De Leche

Ingredients:

• 1 can of sweetened condensed milk
• Flaked sea salt

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius
• Pour the sweetened condensed milk in a pie dish, cover with foil and place in a large baking pan and fill half way up with hot water.  Bake for 1-1 1/4 hours - remember to check regularly that the water level is still half way and top up as needed.  See more details on this process from the master here.
• When the milk is dark and caramel, remove from oven and sprinkle with salt flakes.  Allow to cool completely.

Brownies

Ingredients:

• 200 grams of best quality chocolate (I used half milk and half dark, but each to their own!!!)
• 250 grams of unsalted butter - at room temperature
• 250-300 grams of golden caster sugar (if you use more milk than dark, you can use less sugar if you like)
• 3 large eggs plus 1 egg yolk, lightly beaten
• 80 grams of plain flour
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
• 40 grams of cocoa powder

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius
• Grease and line the base of a 23×33cm baking tray
• Melt the chocolate gently over a pan of hot water, take off the heat and set aside to cool

• Beat together the softened butter and the sugar until really creamy and fluffy

• Slowly and gradually add the eggs while the mixer is still going. Only add more egg once the previous one is fully incorporated. Go slowly as you don't want the mixture to split!
• Continue beating for 5 minutes until the mixture is very fluffy and has increased in volume 

• With the beater on low, add the cooled melted chocolate and then the flour & baking powder - do not over mix at this point, but ensure the ingredients are all combined 

• Pour 2/3 of the batter in to the prepared tin
• Add tiny dollops of the cool salted dulce de leche all across the batter

• Pour over the remaining batter and smooth out gently (the photo below makes the mixture look lighter than it was, but you the gist!)

• Prepare a shallow ice bath - I just use my kitchen sink.  Make sure it's not too deep, otherwise when you plunge the pan in, the water will over flow in to the brownie and we do not want that to happen!  There is more information about the reasons behind the ice bath in the original recipe, but trust me, it was worth it!!!
• Cook for 25 minutes and then check with a skewer. If the skewer comes out just a bit sticky, then it's done, but if the skewer is coated in raw mixture, then put back in the oven for 2-5 minutes. Check again. If needed, cook for another 2-5 minutes.  You don't want the mixture raw, but you definitely don't want it cake like, so do allow the skewer to be a bit sticky when you pull the pan out of the oven.
• Plunge in to ice bath and leave for 1 hour...if you can resist it for that long!  

I packaged some up for gifts using regular brown lunch bags folded over and trimmed with a mini doily to fasten the tops. I heart doilies!!!!

I have another chocolate post coming this week, but after that, I will try to switch back to savouries...well, at least one! ;-)

Happy Baking!

Love Amy xoxo