The first two recipes with toppings that I made were Carole Bloom’s “Caramel Swirl Brownies” (Caramel, Gibbs Smith, 2013; p. 73) and Mindy Segal’s “Barter Brownies” (Cookie Love, Ten Speed Press, 2015; p. 217). Both have toppings that are slightly unusual for brownies: Bloom’s is unusual for being swirled with the batter (most caramel brownies have it just spread on top; compare cream-cheese brownies), and Segal’s is a mixture of melted milk chocolate and cocoa-flavored puffed-rice breakfast cereal. I’ll start with Bloom’s recipe.

Starting with the usual mise en place; the ingredients in the caramel — sugar, cream, corn syrup, and butter — are on the left, and the brownie ingredients (including light brown sugar) are on the right; vanilla is used in both. The chocolate flavor here comes from a combination of bittersweet chocolate (my notes say TCHO 66% baking discs, which is at the low end of Bloom’s suggested range, but from the photo above it appears likely that I used Callebaut 70% instead) and unsweetened chocolate (TCHO 99%). Both brown and granulated sugars are used, but no leavening. The caramel is prepared on the stovetop in the usual way, which is not very photogenic so I’m not showing it here.

Bloom’s brownie batter is made using procedure #2 (as described in part 2 of this series); unlike most of the other recipes, she explicitly specifies use of an electric mixer for the egg-and-sugar step, so I got out my hand mixer. (Two eggs, all that this recipe calls for, is a bit too small for my large stand mixer to beat effectively.) You can see how the egg-sugar mixture lightens in color and becomes creamy after beating for five minutes. (Obviously few bakers would have the patience to do this with a hand whisk, which would probably take ten minutes or more of continuous wrist action.)

Bloom tricked me into using softened butter rather than baking spray to lubricate the pan by calling it out separately in the ingredients list, which (as a result of the way the cookbook was designed) is on a separate page from the main body of the procedure. The recipe explicitly calls for a foil sling, so that’s what I used.

After the batter is added to the pan, the previously prepared caramel sauce is poured on top and swirled with the brownie layer. I didn’t do a very good job of this, so the caramel formed more of a puddle than a swirl design.

Segal’s “Barter Brownies” are the result of a recipe swap she did with another Chicago-area pastry chef. This recipe has a couple of fairly unusual features, aside from the odd puffed-rice topping (Segal’s own addition): it uses extra-large eggs — most baking recipes are written for large eggs — and it calls for dark brown sugar (I of course used more dark muscovado). These brownies are leavened, and actually contain a significant amount of flour; the chocolate flavor comes from a combination of bittersweet chocolate (again, TCHO 66% discs) and Dutch-process cocoa (my usual Valrhona). Construction is by procedure #1.

After baking, Segal’s brownies look pretty ordinary.

The puffed-rice topping is made from a combination of chocolate-flavored puffed rice (I used a weird sprouted puffed brown rice with cocoa flavor that I found at Whole Foods) and melted milk chocolate (TCHO 39% milk chocolate discs). The photo above shows the result after chilling.

Segal suggests, rather than the usual square portions, cutting these brownies into “candy bar” shapes, 1 inch by 4½.

Evaluation results

Bloom’s “Caramel Swirl Brownies” received fairly high marks on all of the specific attributes, including “moistness/mouth feel” (4.2 on a 1–5 scale) and “topping” (4.0), but received a mediocre “overall impression” score of 3.3 (n=6), good only for 11th place. That said, this recipe did receive one “favorite”. Segal’s “Barter Brownies” were rated below average (2.8) on “chocolate flavor”, and ended up in 12th place on “overall impression” with a 3.1 (n=4). I personally didn’t much care for either recipe and would be unlikely to make either one again. (Now I have to figure out what to do with leftover goofy cocoa-flavored-puffed-sprouted-organic-brown-rice cereal!)

Nutrition

Both recipes qualify as “A Low Sodium Food” under FDA regulations.

Caramel Swirl Brownies

Barter Brownies