Salted caramel and pecan brownies

A brownie is the ultimate chocolate cake indulgence. I'm slightly obsessed by salt and chocolate and salted caramel so why not combine them all together?! I saw a picture on a similar brownie on Twitter and so had to try and recreate them. Not content with just the salted caramel, I thought that buttery pecans would add a bit of a crunch and texture to the moist gooeyness of the brownie. I took the finished result to a friend's for to have with coffee. We decided that clotted cream would be lovely with it...well, if you're going for it, why not really go for it!!

Ingredients

200g unsalted butter with a little extra for greasing the tin

100g milk chocolate broken into squares

100g dark chocolate broken into squares

6-8 additional squares of chocolate for decoration

I don’t usually worry about using high quality chocolate in these brownies and tend to use supermarket own brand such as Aldi or Sainsburys.

200g from a 397g can of Carnation caramel

¾ tsp – 1 tsp of flaked sea salt depending on how salty you like your caramel

200g golden caster sugar

4 medium eggs at room temperature

130g plain flour

50g cocoa powder

pinch of salt

75g pecan nuts roughly chopped

edible gold glitter (optional)

Method

1.     Heat the oven to 180/Gas Mark 4 and grease and line a baking tin. The tin I use is 10” by 7” as it gives a nice thick brownie which is needed for this recipe. Any tin of a similar size will work just as well.

2.     Melt the butter in saucepan then remove from the heat and add the chocolate, allowing it to melt so you have a rich buttery, chocolatey mixture

3.     Put the caramel and salt into a small bowl and mix so that it loosens up

4.     Put the sugar and eggs into a large bowl and use a hand or balloon whisk to combine

5.     Whisk in the melted butter and chocolate to the sugar and egg mix

6.     Sift over the flour, cocoa powder and salt and briefly beat the mix together until it is all combined and smooth

7.     Fold in the chopped pecan nuts

8.     Pour half of the brownie mix into the tin

9.     Dot over the caramel mix and very gently smooth it over the base

10.  Pour over the remaining brownie mix and gently smooth to cover the caramel. Try not to let the caramel poke through. If it does it doesn’t matter as something this tasty can’t really be wrong!

11.  Bake in the centre of the oven for 30-40 minutes. You want the top to have a nice crust, but still feel soft underneath. If you insert a skewer it will come out with some caramel mix on and bits of squidgy brownie

12.  Cool in the tin

13.  Melt the retained chocolate and drizzle over the top

14.  For a bit of extra bling, I lightly dusted the top with edible gold glitter

I find chilling the cold brownie still in the tin in the fridge for an hour or so allows the caramel to firm up a little making it easier to cut into pieces without the top breaking.

Serve hot, cold, but itself or with cream, ice cream or my favourite, clotted cream – let’s face it, if you are being naughty with this brownie, clotted cream is not going to make it THAT much worse…is it?!