Salted Caramel Brownies

It started with the caramel sauce.  There's really nothing spectacular about it.  I've made caramel sauce so many times before- just a mixture of sugar, unsalted butter and heavy cream.  Except for the addition of salt- and it's no ordinary salt.  It is the Fleur de Sel or "flower of salt" a hand-harvested sea salt in the island of Ré, off France's Atlantic coast.  Can you imagine those workers scraping laboriously the mere top layer of the salt and bottles and export them all over the world?  No wonder, the 8.8 oz little jar costs $14.95 at Williams-Sonoma.  I hardly use salt when baking but I wanted to know how this special salt affects my food- or will it ever?  

The process begins by placing the sugar in a medium sized sauce pan over medium heat.  

The sugar melts on its own without adding any liquid or water.  Just leave it alone for a bit and just let the melting continue.

It's going to start getting clumpy and at that point whisking briskly is a must or you'll burn the sugar.  That explains why I'm missing some pictures.  The whole caramel making process is easy but at a quick pace.  Anyway, this is the finished product and I just sprinkled fleur de sel on top which dissolved right away.

This is the perfect blend of buttery, sweet and salty and I have to use the same description in a previous post of some Thai dish- not one aspect overpowering the other but marrying well with each other to make a most delicious union. For this, I used a cup of granulated white sugar, a cup of heavy cream. 3/4 stick unsalted butter cut in cubes and pinches of fleur de sel.

Love it on fruits- actually my silly attempt at telling myself it's not as sinful since I had it with fruit

And then come the brownies- the recipe is from my dulce de leche brownies from way back and now with the salted caramel sauce as filling

SALTED CARAMEL BROWNIES

Ingredients:
1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup bittersweet or dark chocolate, finely chopped
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3 large eggs
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup salted caramel sauce 

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Grease a square Pyrex dish
Melt the butter in a medium saucepan. Add the chocolate pieces and stir constantly over low heat until the chocolate is melted.
Remove from heat and whisk in the cocoa powder until smooth.
Add in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the sugar, vanilla, and lastly, the flour. 
Spread half of the batter into the prepared baking dish.  Spoon 9 dollops of salted caramel sauce on top of the brownie batter. Top with the remaining brownie mixture, making sure to spread evenly with a spatula. Then spoon anew 9 dollops of the salted caramel sauce on top of the brownie batter. Using a butter knife, gently run it through the batter to create a swirl effect. 

Bake for 30-32 minutes until the center becomes lightly firm. Remove from the oven and cool completely before slicing. Garnish with pinches of fleur de sel.  Serve with cold milk or with a scoop of vanilla ice cream

This is even better than the brownies I made in the past with Himalayan pink salt and I conclude it’s all about the salted caramel sauce.  I have some leftover for another project- if I can refrain from stealing spoonfuls from the jar.  If not, then I have to make another batch.  I'm thinking pie,,, cupcake,,,, cookies... the list goes on and on .....