Dulce de Leche Brownies

I have been drooling over the thought of dulce de leche (pronounced dool-say duh lay-chay...try saying that five times fast!) for what seems like years. Being a South American sweet, unfortunately it isn't readily available here in Australia; however it is very simple to make your own.

Having said that, there is a good chance of explosion and your kitchen ending up covered in caramel. Hmm not good.

It is the fear of having to spend a weekend scrubbing caramel off my walls that had stopped me from attempting to make dulce de leche. However, when I was perusing one of my favourite blogs, chocolatesuze, I saw that she had made some dulce de leche brownies.

I eventually wiped the drool from my keyboard and set about psyching myself up to make some of this sweet caramel goo.

The method for making dulce de leche is extremely simple; all it involves is boiling a can of sweetened condensed milk for three hours. Yup, that's it. The tricky bit is remembering to top up the water every so often to ensure the can doesn't explode. It is VERY IMPORTANT to keep the can covered at all times.

In order to keep the rattling of the can to a minimum I put a tea towel in the bottom of the saucepan. You can cover the saucepan to minimise the amount of times you have to top up the water; however I found that my saucepan was constantly boiling over so I left the lid off. Keep the water somewhere between a simmer and a rolling boil. When the three hours are up, remove the can from the water with tongs. Leave the can to sit until completely cool. Do NOT open the can when it's still hot (don't say I didn't warn ya!)

I was so jumpy that the can was going to explode that I left the can to cool down overnight. At 5 o'clock this morning I heard a bang, and I was so anxious that my can had spontaneously combusted that I ran to the kitchen to check on it. Can was still intact. Phew.

When I opened the can, here's what greeted me...

...ooh, delicious.

Though Suze had included a recipe with her dulce de leche brownies I opted to use my own.

Ingredients

makes 15 brownies

125g butter, cubed

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

125g dark chocolate (I used Whittaker's Dark Ghana 70%)

3 eggs

1/3 cup cocoa

1/3 cup plain flour

1/4 tsp baking powder

pinch salt

1/3 can dulce de leche

Preheat oven to 180 celsius (160 fan forced) and grease a brownie tin (18 x 28cm). Line the tin with non-stick baking paper.

Melt butter, sugar and chocolate in a large saucepan. Allow to cool for a couple of minutes before beating in eggs. Sift flour, baking powder, cocoa and salt in to saucepan and stir until well combined.

Pour half of the brownie mixture in to the prepared tin. Take your dulce de leche and swirl big spoonfuls over the mixture. Take the other half of the brownie mix and spread evenly over the top.

Bake brownies for 30 minutes (don't worry if they feel a little soft when you remove the tray from the oven - you want them to be soft and chewy).

Allow to cool (you don't want to burn your tongue on the hot dulce de leche...not speaking from experience or anything...) and cut into squares.

I packaged these up for my wonderful friend Michelle as a thank you gift. Unfortunately my beloved Mixmaster Mixy is feeling a little under the weather and is spending a few weeks at the appliance hospital. Michelle graciously offered her Mixmaster for me to use until Mixy returns home (thank god...making Andrena's baby shower cake with handheld beaters was freaking horrible).Michelle is awesome and I'm so thankful that she would lend me her mixer to put me out of my misery.

Enjoy!