Dulche de Leche – Jumping on the bandwagon, again

In Australia we are somewhat shielded from the joys of latin culture. Sydney doesn’t have an expansive ‘Latin American’ town (oh, though I wish it did) and there is much media about the woeful quality of Mexican food here. We are just too far away.

So, yay for the internet, I get to read and learn about taco’s, plantains and dulche de leche.

Caramel Slice was a big part of my more junior cooking education. I hated the grainy cloyingly sweet caramel and milk chocolate combinations that my contemporaries fawned over. I wanted thick, golden condensed milk caramel paired with dark chocolate. Mum would never let me boil the can for fear of explosion, so my caramel slice caramel was a mix of condensed milk, butter and brown sugar and was cooked on the stovetop til luscious and excruciatingly painfully hot – but that is another story.

I had seen and read the Dulche de Leche trend sweeping the internet and didn’t pay much attention until I realised just what it was – and how easy it is to make. I used the David Lebovitz oven technique and cooked mine a little less – see my pie pan (is from the 1970′s and) is brown glass, so it was difficult to see the exact shade – but it was wonderful nonetheless.

But, I couldn’t eat this entire jar with a spoon (oh, though it was appealing), I decided to jump on the internet trend even more, and make some brownies.

I changed the recipe though – mostly due to my depleted pantry, and came out with rich dark brownie, punctuated by unctuously smooth and at times chewy sweet sweet caramel.  The almonds seem a little over the top, next time  I will leave it to the dark chocolate and sweet caramel to speak for themselves.

My Dulche de Leche Brownies
200g lindt 70% dark chocolate
120g butter
1 cup flour
3 eggs
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1 cup dulche de leche
1/2 cup chopped almonds (optional)

Line a 20cm square pan with baking paper and pre-heat your oven to 175 Degrees Celsius.
In a pan, melt the butter. Remove from heat and a stir through chopped chocolate until smooth. Stir in the sugar. Cool slightly then add the eggs one at a time, mixing well between each addition. Stir through the flour and almonds (if using).
This batter is quite rich but not too sweet, so I wouldn’t recommend it without the caramel.
Spoon half the batter into the pan, then drop teaspoon sized droplets of caramel on top and smoosh around. Top with remaining batter and repeat the caramel process.
Bake in preheated oven for about 30 mins until batter is set. Eat when cooled and store in the fridge.