Caramel Filled Brownies

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Unwrap the caramels (if necessary) and put them in a small saucepan with the 1/3 cup of condensed milk on the stove over low heat. Keep an eye on it through all the other steps, and stir it often so it doesn’t burn.

Make the dough by combining the butter, cake mix, and the remaining 1/3 cup of condensed milk in a mixing bowl and squishing everything together with your hands. It will be a dough, not a batter. (Quite thick and you can roll it into a ball if you wanted.) Make sure there are no dry lumps of cake mix.

Press half the brownie dough into a 9×13″ baking pan that you’ve sprayed with cooking spray. Bake this part for 5 minutes and remove from the oven.

Immediately sprinkle the chocolate chips on the warm dough.

Once every single bit of caramel is melted, pour the caramel over the chocolate chips, but leave a good eighth of an inch along the edges, or you will hate cutting the brownies later. Spread around with a spatula if necessary. (Cleanup tip: immediately submerge the caramel pan in hot, soapy water to soak.)

The top of the dough can be done two ways. I’ve done both and both are good.

Method A: press the remaining dough into flat pancake-things between your hands, and lay them gently on top of the caramel to cover most of it.

Method B: crumble the dough as much as you can (easy with butter, impossible with margarine) and sprinkle it all over the top of the caramel, kind of like a crumble topping.

Finally: bake the whole pile in the oven at 350F for 15 minutes. Remove from oven, and let cool completely at room temperature. If you keep your house around 65F or lower, go ahead and let it cool overnight before you cut them up. If your house is warm, refrigerate the dough until it is completely chilled, and remove from the fridge an hour before cutting.

I find a serrated steak knife (ours are Henckel’s) to be the best for cutting these guys up. Cut them small, because they are VERY rich.