Salted Caramel Pretzel Brownies

I became inspired to make something like these brownies once I successfully made this salted caramel recipe from Averie Cooks. If you think you want to take a crack at making your own caramel sauce, if you like caramel (I've said it before, but for the record--and you can write this down--I thought I didn't until I made some), you should give it a go. You just lay out all your ingredients before starting (because you can't be measuring out ingredients while you've got sugar boiling), and then it's mostly just watching it to make sure it doesn't burn. I've made it three times now, and my sugar starts to become caramel around 12-13 minutes of boiling.

But I digress. Go for it if you want (I have faith in you, dear reader). I've laid out some photos of what the process might look like below. Or, you can use jarred caramel sauce. That's part of the beauty of this recipe. Although multilayered, this recipe can be as easy as you want. These brownies are ridiculous and unnecessary. They are over the top and stupid indulgent. People love them. The pretzel crust (adapted from the crust in this recipe) is pretty thick and crunchy, and the brownie base I used is cocoa brownies (sans sea salt)--the now standard in our house. I've made them a few times, and each time I varied the recipe slightly to a different end.

In the first run through, I added the caramel about 10 minutes before the end of the brownies' cooking time. Once finished, you couldn't see the caramel at all, as it had baked into the brownie itself. Ultimately, I was needlessly disappointed--they still had a great salted caramel taste, but I disliked that the caramel's presence wasn't visually apparent. The second time through, I added the caramel just a minute or two before pulling them out of the oven, so there was a layer of melty caramel on top that would slide around as you tilted the pan. While nice to look at initially, it made cutting them very difficult (i.e., they looked like a nightmare when I was done) and would make packaging them next to impossible.

What I ended up doing in this final run through was to add the caramel about 5-7 minutes before taking them out of the oven, settling on the fact that they would be a little messy to cut but that there would still be a little caramel pooled at the top. An alternative way of doing it would be to use the first method (baking it into the top), cutting the brownies, and then drizzling a thin ribbon of caramel over them in a nice pattern. Something to consider. Onto the goods.

Salted Caramel Pretzel Brownies

(inspired by recipes by Averie Cooks) 

Crust

Ingredients

1 stick of unsalted butter, melted

1 cup crushed pretzels

3/4 cup brown sugar, packed

1 tbsp cornstarch

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8 x 8 pan with parchment paper or aluminum foil sprayed or greased. Use a food processor (or a couple of sandwich bags and a big canned good), crush pretzels--it's fine if there remain some larger chunks; it doesn't all have to be powder fine. 

Pour melted butter with pretzels, sugar, and cornstarch into a medium bowl, and mix until well combined. Pour into prepared pan, pressing it into the corners well. 

Bake for 5-7 minutes; you'll be able to see little bubbles in the edges of the crust, but it'll still seem a little loose when you pull it out of the oven. Set aside while you prepare the brownies. 

Brownie

Use whatever brownie recipe you'd like, whether it's the cocoa brownies that I used  or your favorite brownie recipe or that Ghiradelli chocolate box mix that you have 6 of in the pantry because they were on BOGO at Publix last week. 

For this recipe, I switched it up a bit and used Hershey's Dark cocoa powder instead of the regular stuff. I also omitted the sea salt on the top because there's salt both in the pretzel crust (unless you used unsalted pretzels, which I didn't) and in the caramel. 

Once you finish the batter, you'll just pour it into the pan on top of the prezel crust and pop it in the oven for the allotted time, pulling them out of the oven about 5-7 minutes before the cooking time is up. 

Caramel

Again, you can either make this yourself, or you can use jarred caramel sauce. When I've made the caramel, I've tried it both as written and with coconut milk instead of heavy cream. The coconut milk is a good option if you wanted to make the caramel vegan, and it's good, with a slight coconut flavor. They're both good, but I prefer the one with the cream. I'm not going to list the full recipe here, but here are some of the highlights from the first time I made it:

Clockwise from top to bottom: heavy cream, sugar, corn syrup, vanilla, salt (center: water).

Make sure to lay out the ingredients beforehand--although, truth be told, I put the cream back in the refrigerator until I was ready to use it. Also, I timed it both for future caramel-making purposes and for blogging purposes. 

Clockwise from top left: 3 minutes; 9 minutes; after addition of cream, vanilla, and salt

I wasn't able to get photos of the point where the sugar starts to turn because it happens quickly--you have about half a minute before the sugar will burn. For the full recipe, which is written out in a super easy-to-follow format, go to Averie Cooks.

Assembled

Once you the brownies are out, how you proceed will depend on what brownie base you use. For the cocoa brownies, they need to cool for a good while before cutting. I allow them to cool completely, lifting them out of the pan once they're cool to the touch and letting them come to room temperature on a wire rack before putting them in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

Look at those sticky but not unmanageable little pools of caramel on top. And that pretzel crust peeking out from the bottom corner. It's beautiful!

ENJOY!