Salted Caramel Brownies Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What happens if you don't add salt to brownies? ›

Salt enhances the sweetness in your brownies. You might think that adding salt would make brownies, or any chocolate, salter, but it actually brings out the sweet quality in these types of desserts. Sprinkle it in the batter or add flaky sea salt to the top of the brownies after removing them from the oven.

The only thing that saves them from being chocolate overkill is the generous portion of salt in the batter, which cuts through the richness of the chocolate. But the real star is the flaked sea salt on top, a completely necessary component that adds the occasional crunch and pop of pure salty bliss.

While brown sugar can certainly impart a subtle caramel and toffee-like flavor to your brownie batch, this ingredient also brings extra moisture to your recipe, due in part to the molasses used to create the product.

The molasses content in brown sugar is what is responsible for chewy yet soft brownies. If you don't want chewy brownies, completely keep brown sugar out of the picture. If you do want chewy brownies and it's not mentioned in your recipe, add 3-4 tbsp of brown sugar in the end for beautifully chewy brownies!

Without salt, your dough will rise faster than it normally would, leading to less flavor development and a weaker structure. To incorporate the salt, mix it with a few teaspoons of water. Return your dough to the mixer, tear it into three to six pieces, and drizzle the liquid on top.

When used in small amounts, salt reduces bitter flavors and enhances sweet, making your dessert bread divine. In larger amounts, it reduces the sweet and enhances umami, so your savory recipes stand out. If you forget the salt, your bread will likely taste bland unless you have other ingredients to compensate.

Using caster sugar in brownies also helps to get a super crinkly top. Caster sugar has a smaller grain size than granulated sugar, so it dissolves better in the egg mixture, to give that nice crinkly top. If you only have granulated sugar on hand it will still work fine particularly if you are in the US.

Fudgy brownies have a higher fat-to-flour ratio than cakey ones. So add more fat—in this case, butter and chocolate. A cakey batch has more flour and relies on baking powder for leavening. The amount of sugar and eggs does not change whether you're going fudgy or cakey.

The molasses content in dark brown sugar will make your baked goods moister than if you use light brown sugar. That means that not only is the flavor affected, but the texture will be, too. Light brown sugar will result in a subtler flavor, while dark brown sugar will give your baked goods a richer flavor.

I didn't use enough butter in this batch and it muted the flavor of the brownies. I thought less butter would have made these brownies less mushy than their counterparts, but they were just as soft in the center and held onto their chewy edges.

What happens if you add too many eggs to brownies? ›

They give brownies a lighter, drier, and more cake-like texture. If you prefer this over the chewy variety, then go ahead and crack in that additional egg. On the other hand, too many eggs will yield brownies that are hard, heavy, and tough.

Your oven might have been too hot - slightly burnt edges can impart a nasty bitter taste. You might have used too much baking powder - leavening agents can create an acidic taste.

A: In bread recipes, salt strengthens the gluten, the protein strands that help to form the structure. It also enhances shelf life, keeping bread from going stale as quickly. A little salt makes sweet things taste sweeter. Cutting out the salt completely would mean the cake or cookie wouldn't taste as sweet.

As a general rule for sweet recipes, 1 tsp. kosher salt can be substituted with 2 tsp. soy sauce without adversely affecting the finished product. And don't worry—your baked goods won't taste like soy sauce, but they will have an undetectable note that will have people coming back for seconds.

Baking recipes typically call for unsalted butter because the amount of salt in salted butter varies depending on the brand – there is no “industry standard.” For example, if you use one brand of salted butter in a recipe, and we use another, our baked goods could end up tasting very different from one other.

“You'd be surprised that the dough would still rise, though the bread would taste a little different. You can also use flavor enhancers to provide the salty, savory, satiating sensation you lose when you reduce the salt. But that wouldn't help with the rise, so you cannot remove salt 100%.”