Never again

I am easy to please when it comes to most things. Food is no exception. While I would like to consider myself something of a foodie, I am not nearly critical enough to warrant this title. I love food and I bake a lot, but if there is enough butter or sugar (or, let's be honest, enough flour) in any recipe, I'll eat the whole thing in one sitting if left uninterrupted.

This week, though, I outdid myself. When I set out to create Matt and Renato's Sweet and Salty Brownie, I was convinced something would go wrong. Firstly, the initial step required making caramel. Having epicly failed to make fudge on multiple occasions, I now shy away from recipes involving boiled sugar. Secondly, believe it or not, I have yet to produce a batch of brownies (Ina Garten's box brownies excluded) that have been truly mind-blowing. At least, I hadn't until this week.

With some assistance from Dani and Sophie, I was able to produce a baked good that allowed me to both reassess my fears of caramel and brownies, and deeply regret not proposing brownies for bake-off. Cruel world.

Sweet and Salt Brownies

followed exactly from Baked Explorations

Caramel-part

* 1 cup sugar

* 2 tbsp light corn syrup

* 1/2 cup heavy cream

* 1 tsp fleur de sel

* 1/4 cup sour cream

Brownie-part

* 1 1/4 cup flour

* 1 tsp salt

* 2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

* 11 oz dark chocolate (might have used slightly more, but who's counting)

* 2 sticks butter

* 1 1/2 cups sugar

* 1/2 cup brown sugar

* 5 eggs

* 2 tsp vanilla

For the caramel: Mix the sugar, corn syrup and 1/4 cup water in a saucepan and put over high heat. Boil for 6-8 minutes or until the mixture is "dark amber" colored (or 350˚ if you have a thermometer). Once it has reached this stage of caramelization, turn off the heat and whisk in the heavy cream (careful of extremely hot bubbling mixture), then add the fleur de sel. Whisk in the sour cream. Set aside.

(Note: this was by far the most stressful step of a baking project I have ever undertaken. For one thing, while I was watching and stirring the sugar and corn syrup mixture, something was smelling very weird. Like an over used sponge. Since caramel is supposed to be delicious in taste and scent, this was distressing. When I pointed out the weird odor, Dani pointed out that the corn syrup had expired in 2007. She also maintained that I was removing the mixture from the stovetop before it had reached optimal amberization. At this point, I resigned myself to the caramel being disgusting and the brownies being a complete failure. Nonetheless, I continued with the recipe.)

For the brownie: Preheat oven to 350˚ F. Butter and parchment paper a 9x13 inch baking dish (usually I skip parchment paper as a rule, but due to the stickiness factor of caramel, I complied this time).

Put the chocolate and butter in a medium-large heatproof bowl. Place on top of a pot of simmering water. I recommend breaking up the chocolate and cutting up the butter. I skipped this step and it all worked out in the end, but might have saved some time. While the melting is underway, mix the flour, salt and cocoa powder in a separate bowl.

Once chocolate and butter are fully melted, turn off the heat (I forgot to do this, which was OK, but the point is to allow the mixture to cool before adding the eggs) but leave over the water. Mix in the sugars. Once combined, remove the bowl from the stove. When the mixture reaches room temp, whisk in 3 of the eggs. Add the other two eggs and the vanilla and mix until just combined, but don't overmix (or, Matt and Renato warn, you will have cakey brownies! The horror!!!!)

Sprinkle the flour mixture on top. Fold into the chocolate mixture until almost all the flour has been absorbed.

Put half the brownie batter into the pan and spread out. Pour about 3/4 of the caramel mixture onto the batter layer (seriously, no more. The recipe does not call for the rest of the caramel, but it can and should be saved and added to the brownies once they are baked. Or poured over ice cream). Finally, top it all off with the rest of the batter. Cover as much of the caramel as possible with the batter (Note: I left a decent amount of caramel uncovered because I put too much batter on the bottom. It was only after I had put it in the oven that I read the recipe's side-note, warning that uncovered caramel risked burning in the oven. By this time there was no going back. Luckily, this batch did not burn. The moral of the story is: it is probably OK to leave some caramel uncovered.).

Bake in the oven for 30 minutes. Remove and sprinkle with 1 1/2 tsp fleur de sel. Let cool completely (for me, this involved a 5 minute refrigerator stint) before cutting. Eat with milk.

Needless to say, the brownies were indescribably delicious. Even the caramel, over which I had gained a few gray hairs, was to die for (tip: corn syrup doesn't expire!). Special thanks to Dani, Sophie, Cat, Nick and my parents for helping demolish these in less than 24 hours.

Final point: the pictures from this baking session simply cannot do the thing justice. It is an extreme situation that would oblige me to rob readers of food-tography, and in this case, the photos were not only sub-par, they were pretty unappetizing. For this reason, all the photos in this post are completely irrelevant, but will be less likely to discourage you from making these brownies, which you should do immediately.