Chocolate Lovers Delight

Malted Salted Caramel Brownies

Happy Friday from Edinburgh!

We have escaped London for a nice long weekend and have headed north to enjoy four days of comedy at the Edinburgh Fridge (and also to eat our way around the city). The trip is for my boyfriends birthday and todays post is his birthday bake.

Every year on Mike’s birthday I make him something which he, obviously, gets to choose the flavours of. This year, he settled on a brownie with malt, caramel and something crunchy. Sounded like a winner to me, so I got to work. I went with a classic fudge brownie as the base, quite often I use an alternative grain, like rye, for added flavour but kept it simple for this brownies. I also made the brownies a little thicker than normal, to add a bit of decadence. I added the malt flavour to the caramel and also to the crunch element, which came in the form of malt shortbread chunks. At this point I should tell you that the finished look of the brownies is not how I intended them to look. I was going for a brownie studded with chunks of biscuit and distinct pockets of caramel. In retrospect it was obvious how I should achieved this, but I was trying to multitask and cook dinner at the same time and let’s just say multitasking is not my particular strong suit. I spooned dollops of caramel atop the brownie batter to sit alongside the chunks of biscuit, but when the brownies baked the caramel obviously didn’t fully sink into the brownies, the top most layer kind of melted and spread to cover everywhere the biscuits were not. To really get the definition I wanted, and to still see the glossy top of the brownie, I should have either spread in half the batter, dolloped in the caramel and then topped it with the remaining batter or the other option would have been to pipe the caramel just below the surface of the batter. Thankfully Mike reminded me it wouldn’t change the taste. Because I really didn’t love the look of the brownies I sprinkled a handful of mini chocolate chips, which I had on hand, and that added a nice contrast  from the caramel and the shortbread, and thankfully no one has ever complained about more chocolate, so it was a win win.

I happen to think I make a particularly good brownie so here are my top tips for making the perfect brownie.

Whisk It Good

To get both a deliciously shiny glossy top and the perfectly fudgy texture you want to whisk the hell out of your eggs and sugar. Pop the two ingredients together and use an electric mixer of some sort and whisk until the mixture turns almost white. This gives that perfectly thin crackly crust I look for in a brownie.

Fold It In

Nobody wants a tough brownie so when the dry goods are added you want to fold them into the batter rather than beat them, you also don’t want to over do it; fold the dry goods just until the odd speck of flour is still visible. This prevents over working the batter, keeping it fudgy and not chewy.

Underbake It

Brownies to me are fudgy, they should be set (not wet) but not at all dry. It’s a fine line. To achieve this you want to bake the brownies until the centre of the tray no longer wobbles and a toothpick inserted into the brownies comes out still very moist, not quite liquid and you should also see sticky looking crumbs but if you leave it too long or god forbid the toothpick comes out clean you will have overbooked the brownies. When it comes to brownies, it is always better to underbake than to overbake.

Chill Them

This might seem counterintuitive but after baking you want to chill the brownies. After chilling, they have a slightly denser texture and are also much easier to cut and look more impressive for it.

The recipe is below for paid subscribers