Brownies are a pretty staple bake for me. Gooey, surgery and completely sinful, I really shouldn't make them as often as I should. However there is something so therapeutic about melting the butter and chocolate together, adding the copious amounts of sugar and beating in the eggs to create a thick, shiny black lacquer. Pure calories on a spoon.
Recently, I have been trying to experiment with the flavours and textures of brownies - thinking of new combinations to increase the overall intensity of the experience. The latest of these expetimentations occurred today, and the result was: Salted Caramel Brownies.
I am already a massive fan of salted caramel. To me, the combination of crunchy salt crystals and teeth melting sweet caramel is pretty much perfection. I had tried to make salted brownies before using rocksalt, but the two elements remained too separate and didn't really make sense. So it seemed to make more sense to combine the salt into a preexisting sauce with enough weight to hold it's own shape and individual flavours in amongst the brownie mixture. The recipie I used was that of Nigella Lawson's Salted Caramel Sauce. It was easy enough to make and produced a thick syrup which help nicely in the brownie mix.
I was really happy with the end result. The sauce formed in lovely pockets across the top of the surface. It seemed to change the texture of the brownies quite significantly. Normally the end result is a very dense, wet crumb. But this time the end brownie was much more cake like. I have to say, I was very impressed with myself. Now we just have to get through them without being sick... Somehow, I don't think that will be an issue for Luca...
