Spitting mad as caramel dreams turn rock hard

By KERRY MCCRAY
kmccray@modbee.com

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Attention: Do not make this recipe if you value your teeth.

Yes, the photo on the Web site looks good — mouthwatering even. And the ingredients, including a whopping three sticks of butter, seem innocent enough as long as you're not counting calories.

But beware of the caramels. Not only do you have to unwrap 40-some of the little buggers, but when you finally get to sample the brownies (assuming you can cut them), the hard lumps will stop you midbite.

Caramel Brownies

Hoping for an easy Valentine's Day dessert, I picked this recipe off the popular Web site myrecipes.com. A center for all things culinary, this site archives recipes from magazines known for good food, like Sunset, Southern Living and Cooking Light.

I had hoped for an easy V-day recipe, one my caramel-loving husband would like. What I got was nice brownies imbedded with rock-hard kernels of caramel. They were impossible to chew, so we had to spit them out on our plates. Not a recipe for romance.

I chose the dessert partly because it was easy, but actually, it was anything but. My regular grocery store didn't have caramels, so I had to stop by another store. When I finally found the candy bins, the caramels seemed a little hard, but I didn't think anything of it.

At home, the kids and I made the batter. It felt decadent to melt all that butter. And when the batter came together — wow! It was dense and rich, much more chocolaty than batter made from a boxed mix. (Yes, I eat the batter. Who doesn't?)

The kids liked it, too, and begged for me to leave more than usual in the mixing bowl. By the time we were ready to pour it into the pan, they both had chocolate mustaches, as well as chocolate-spattered faces, clothes, even shoes.

The recipe called for lining the baking pan with buttered foil, something I would never think to do. But it's a smart-thinking idea, as my kids would say. This way, you don't end up with a crusty brownie mess and a pan you have to soak overnight.

Before you pop the brownies in the oven, you scatter caramels over the batter. Easier said than done, given that my caramels were hermetically sealed in plastic. I don't know who eats these things, but they must be Houdinis. It took me at least 15 minutes to unwrap them all.

The brownies made the house smell like See's candy as they baked. And they looked stunning when they came out of the oven — dark and luscious and gooey with light-brown caramel ribbons running through them.

But by the time they cooled, the caramel had hardened. Maybe it had to do with the type of caramel I bought? Perhaps if you went to a candy store instead of a grocery store, you would get better quality.

I hacked the brownies to pieces and served them for dessert. In between spitting out caramels, my husband managed to say that the brownie part — not the caramel part — was good.

I agreed. I'd make them again, but without the caramels.

Bee staff writer Kerry McCray can be reached at 578-2358 or at kmccray@modbee.com.

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What The Testers Had To Say

The caramels need to be covered with batter or at least pushed down in the batter so they soften up. Some spots were very firm.

— Suzanne Pater, Modesto

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These need to come with a warning — must prepare for a rich sugar and butter overdose. But don't let that stop you. Just remember, a little goes a long way. I made the batter as stated, but I used mini muffin pans, spraying the tins with PAM. I used 1 heaping tablespoon of batter in each cup with the caramel placed in each cup center. I topped half of them with a pecan half for a turtle brownie. These are so rich that a little two-bite brownie is more than enough to satisfy any sweet tooth.