I guess I was feeling the withdrawal from not being able to do my usual Christmas cooking, so, right when I usually stop baking for a few months, suddenly I had the insane urge to make some brownies. Since we don’t keep brownie mix in the pantry, the girls and I whipped up some brownies from scratch, but we wanted to kick these bad boys up a few notches, so we scrounged through the pantry and freezer to see what we could find.
First, we grabbed a can of condensed milk and stuck that in a pot of boiling water for 4 hours. The result? A divinely rich dulce de leche; it tasted very close to caramel, and would be perfect for dipping tart apple slices.
The girls whipped up the brownies we found here.
1 2/3 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cup baking cocoa
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
2 tablespoons water
3/4 cups butter or margarine, melted
2 teaspoons vanilla
Chocolate chips and nuts, if desired
Preheat oven to 350 deg. Grease 9×9″ baking pan (use a 9×13″ if just making plain brownies).
Combine dry ingredients in large mixer bowl; stir. Add wet ingredients and stir well.
We spread half the brownie batter in the pan, then spread half the can of dulce de leche over it and sprinkled it with 3/4 cup unsweetened coconut and 1/2 cup chopped pecans. Then we spread the remaining brownie batter on top of that, topping it with the rest of the dulce de leche, coconut, and chopped pecans. We baked our brownies for 18-25 minutes (ours ran 25 minutes), then let them cool. The toothpick came out a little sticky; this is normal.
Suffice it to say, these didn’t last long, but what a wonderful treat they were!
