Dulce de Leche Brownies

I had never even heard of dulce de leche until I read this post by my cousin Kate. When I read that a few months ago I thought that I had to try that sometime, it looked delicious! Well the other day I was on another blog when I saw this recipe, so I decided to try it. This were so good! Now I have to admit that I didn't make the dulce de leche from scratch like Kate did, I took a short cut which I've seen talked about in a few places. I put a can of sweetened condensed milk into a glass pie plate, sprinked it with a little kosher salt and covered it tightly with tinfoil. Then I placed the pie plate in a large roasting pan and filled it halfway up the pie pan with hot water. I baked this for an hour and fifteen minutes at 425 degrees and got this...

Not exactly what I was expecting. I mean, it was delicious, but I eat sweetened condensed milk out of the can so how couldn't it be? I think this needs to be baked another 15 minutes or more. I think it would carmelize more and be more like dulce de leche. Now that I had the dulce, I put it in brownies!

Dulce de Leche Brownies

adapted from David Lebovitz

8 Tbsp (115 g) butter, cut into pieces

6 ounces (170 g) semisweet chocolate

1/4 cup (25 g) unsweetened cocoa powder

3 large eggs

1 cup (100 g) sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup (140 g) flour

1 cup Dulce de Leche

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8 inch square glass pan. I've given my rant on the importance of weighing ingredients before, so I won't do it again here, but just remember it's important and produces a much better product.

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan and then, over very low heat, melt the chocolate pieces into the butter. You don't need to use a double boiler set up if the heat is really low and you stir it constantly. After all the chocolate is melted, remove from the heat and whisk in the cocoa powder. Then add the eggs one at a time while stirring, followed by the sugar, vanilla and flour.

Add half the batter to the greased baking pan. Take a third of the dulce de leche and drop it into the batter (try and get it evenly spaced). Take a knife and drag it through the leche and swirl it all around.

Now pour the rest of the brownie batter over the first layer and dollop the rest of the leche onto it. Again, swirl your knife through the dollops until it is nicely marbled.

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes until the center is just firm. These were so delicious! And they received a number of compliments at this weeks happy hour. These brownies were so thick and rich, and the stayed warm and gooey in the center for hours (maybe because it was 90 degrees outside). I think these would be very good with bittersweet chocolate too. The slight bitterness would be offset by the sweetness of the dulce de leche.