Caramel Brownies

I'm not even sure if this justifies a post... but this is a baking blog and even if it's not a legit recipe I'll put it down for the record books.

My family swears by Duncan Hines brownie mix, so when you add caramels... Well, it doesn't get much better. Yesterday Shannon and I both had some free time, and instead of getting ahead on work we decided it would be well worth it to make some caramel brownies.  We're still incredibly excited about our oven.

Neither of us usually like to opt for box mixes, but I had brownie mix from home that I had brought up and I assured her it was good. Next time I we'll try the recipe with a homemade recipe, I think.

The concept is simple: make the brownie mix, and pour half of it in a tray and bake for a bit. Then put the caramel mixture on so that you have two layers, followed by tablespoonfuls of the rest of the brownie mix. Swirl to your heart's desire and stick it back in the oven.

The brownie part was simple: just follow the instructions on the box. For the caramel part, I looked at a few recipes for caramel brownies and they suggested 14 oz of caramels (the pre-wrapped kind, which I happened to have for just this purpose) combined with 14 oz of evaporated milk or sweetened condensed milk. You heat the two ingredients up and when the caramels are melted you're ready to pour your caramel layer.

The only problem is that we didn't have evaporated milk or sweetened condensed milk, and neither did our neighbors in Brunswick P. There's a small corner store by our apartment, however, so I walked over and was delighted to find that they stocked both. I bought some sweetened condensed milk and the baking process continued without further ado.

Since the bag of caramels was already open, we didn't use a full 14 oz. I'd say we used 10-12 oz. And since we figured our creation would be sweet enough, we only used about half of the can of sweetened condensed milk - probably a bit under 7oz. It was a perfect consistency, despite not being what the recipe called for.

We used a large tray, so we cut the cooking times down, though we kept the oven at 350. After 5 minutes or so of the first layer in the oven, we took it out and put the caramel layer on, then the rest of the brownie mix. We cooked it for at least 20 more minutes then took it out a bit undercooked. After letting it sit in the pan for over an hour it was easy to cut but still gooey - exactly how I like my brownies.