Fudge Brownies and Salted Caramel Sauce

If you've been consistently following our blog, then you know by now that we're big chocolate fiends. Today's recipe is to die for fudge brownies with a homemade salted caramel sauce. Sounds simple enough...right? So we thought! This turned out to be an adventure, a kind of funny one at that. This is the original recipe we used, which we changed a bit because, of course, we had to add MORE chocolate!

Ingredients:

1 and 1/4 sticks of unsalted butter
1 and 1/4 cups white sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (we used Hershey's)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2 cup all purpose flour
Chocolate chips/pieces

1) Using a double boiler combine the butter, sugar and cocoa powder and melt together.

*Interlude: Things already got interesting at this point. Although we do a lot of baking, this is the first time we've actually made brownies from scratch so we weren't quite sure what to expect or what the batter was supposed to look like. Up until today, we've relied on the boxed brownie mix to get our brownie craving satisfied! The mixture of the butter, sugar and cocoa powder once melted together was extremely grainy. We thought something had gone wrong because there was no way brownie batter was supposed to look that grainy in our minds... Feeling kind of disappointed we continued on. The good news? YES! For all you brownie first timers out there, this part of the batter is supposed to be very grainy! Do not panic!

2) Let the mixture cool until it is just warm and not hot, then add the vanilla extract and one egg at a time, making sure everything is well incorporated.

*Interlude: This is when things started to look up. We discovered that when you added the egg, the batter smoothened out!!

3) Add in the flour and mix well.
4) Place in a square baking pan (we used a standard 9x9 inch baking pan, which gave us the perfect thickness) and bake at 320F for 20-25 minutes.

Our brownies took 22 minutes to bake, but we suggest checking it every minute after 20 minutes because you do NOT want to overbake these brownies! If there's one sin in baking brownies, it's overbaking them. A minute too long in the oven can result in dry and unappealing brownies, so be sure not to overbake them! You'll know you got it right when they're fudgey in the center but not gooey.

Chocolatey goodness

To go with the brownies we bought some vanilla ice cream, and made some home made salted caramel sauce. The salted caramel sauce recipe came from a very good friend of ours, Burgerography. You can check out his blog here for some delicious recipes and restaurant reviews.

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
3/4 cup heavy cream
4 TBSP unsalted butter
Sea salt to taste

1) Start by continuously stirring the water and sugar until it becomes a thick syrupy texture on medium heat on a non-stick pan.

2) The mixture will eventually harden to resemble little crystals, which will melt and turn into an amber colour.

3) Once amber, take the pan off the heat and add in your butter 1 tablespoon at a time whilst mixing vigorously.
4) After adding the butter, add the cream and stir vigorously. (WARNING: when adding the cream the mixture will bubble violently, therefore we suggest using a large non-stick pan - this scared the daylights out of us)

Salted Caramel Sauce

5) Add sea salt to taste, and mix until it looks smooth and shiny.

Note: You can store the caramel in a jar or container in the fridge, and if it gets too hard simply microwave it for 30 seconds during your next use.

Slice the brownies, add a scoop of vanilla ice cream and drizzle the salted caramel sauce.

Fudge brownies with vanilla ice cream and salted caramel sauce