What are the holidays without chocolate? Boring!

I have always loved chocolate. Chocolate cake, chocolate cream pie, chocolates…. It never mattered to me if it was cheap chocolate or expensive chocolate as long as it was chocolate! Now that I am, shall we say, getting a bit older my tastes are changing a bit. I no longer have time nor desire or any chocolate dessert or candy that doesn’t give me the smooth, creamy, chocolaty taste I am looking for.

I love the taste of salt and chocolate together. If I could pick one food to live on for the rest of my life, this is my fantasy so calories and nutrition are not an issue, it would be salted caramels. I love the sweet/salty mash-up. That is what these brownies are. The brownies are thick and chocolaty with the salty topping.

Verdict:

About halfway through cooking these we realized there was a problem with our oven. We have a double oven and sometimes when they are both in use and we pre-heat the top oven it never quite pre-heats. Meaning that as you look at the oven you can see the temperature is about 5-10 degrees below the cooking temperature. I slide the brownies in the oven but never heard the beep to say it reached cooking temperature. I thought it was odd but I figured I just missed it. Nope. Never fully reached cooking temperature so the brownies were a bit raw in the center and overcooked on the top by the time I took them out.

But, amazingly they were still beyond delicious. We used the hot softer center brownies as a kind of semi firm lava cake with vanilla ice cream and the edges were perfect brownies.  The picture above shows this. It is super rich and decadent so you don’t need much to feel satisfied.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter
• 2 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/4 cups cocoa
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 Tablespoon vanilla
• 4 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 1/2 cups toffee pieces, divided
• 1 cup roasted almonds, chopped
• Pink Himalayan Sea Salt for topping

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9″x 13″ baking dish with non-stick spray.
2. In a medium-sized saucepan melt the butter over low heat then add the sugar and stir to combine. Stir until mixture is shiny, but do not let it bubble or boil. Remove mixture from heat.
3.  Stir in the cocoa, baking powder, salt, and vanilla extract.
4. Beat in the eggs and stir until fully combined.
5. Add the flour, chocolate chips, and 1 cup of the toffee pieces. Stir the entire mixture until no lumps remain.
6. Pour the batter into prepared baking dish. Sprinkle remaining toffee and chopped almonds evenly over the brownie batter. Sprinkle with sea salt, if desired.
7. Bake the brownies for about 30 minutes, or until they are set and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Allow brownies to cool before serving.