Marsha's Caramel Brownies

Scott drives in a carpool for work and one of the fellows that rides along mentioned how delicious he thought my caramel brownies were. It's been (probably) years since Scott took a batch of my brownies to work with him, so it was particularly flattering that he would remember. In honor of his praise, I thought I would share with everyone.

It's another one of those recipes that calls for pre-made ingredients (cake mix and caramels), so I am a big fan.  You just can't go wrong when someone else does half the work for you. Enjoy!

I can't remember where this recipe originally came from, but there are many similar ones on the Internet.

Marsha's Caramel Brownies

Ingredients:

• 14 oz. bag caramels
• 2/3 cup evaporated milk (5 oz. can), divided
• 1 pkg. German Chocolate cake mix
• ¾ cup melted butter
• 1 cup chocolate chips

Directions:

1. In a saucepan, stir together caramels and half of evaporated milk.  Melt over stove and keep warm.  
2. Grease and flour a 9x13 pan.  
3. Mix butter with cake mix and rest of evaporated milk.  
4. Press half of cake mixture into bottom of 9x13 pan.  
5. Bake at 350 degrees for 8 minutes or so.  
6. Spread caramel over top of cooked cake mix.  Then layer with chocolate chips.  
7. Finally crumble remaining cake mix over top of chocolate chips.  
8. Bake for 20 more minutes or until done.  
9. Let brownies cool for about ten minutes and then run a knife around the edge of pan to loosen caramel before it cools completely.

Marsha's Notes:

The trick to these brownies is figuring out the perfect amount of time to bake the bottom layer of brownies.  They need to bake long enough that the caramel can't seep through to the very bottom of the pan (or else you get an extremely HARD bottom crust), but not too long so the bottom burns before the top layer of brownie is cooked through... so experiment and see what works best for you! 

All cake mixes are a little different and will give you a little different consistency. For one of my most recent batches, I felt like the batter was extra loose, more like a traditional brownie batter, and I was worried that the brownies weren't going to turn out. However, two things happened. 

1. The end product turned out really moist and soft (so a different texture than what I was used to with other batches of these brownies) but still really delicious and everyone loved them. So, nothing to be worried about.
2. After letting the remaining batter sit on the counter while the bottom crust baked, I discovered that it had actually tightened up into something that I could have crumbled and "pressed" into the bottom of the pan if I had just let things sit for about 8-10 minutes. Knowing that would have probably made me less worried that the batter was "too loose."