Caramel Chocolate Brownies, Easy Chocolate Caramel Brownies

Today is day 9 of cooking from THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT I decided to do just one recipe today, but make it a good one (hopefully). I made Caramel Chocolate Brownies (Easy Chocolate Caramel Brownies as the cookbook calls it). Here's our take on these brownies...

EASY CHOCOLATE CARAMEL BROWNIES (Chocolate Caramel Brownies is what we're calling them), most definitely definitely delicious!

Ok, these were petty easy. There still were several steps to making them, but they really were easy. I probably only spent about 20 minutes total on the actual work of making them, plus the bake time.

The recipe called for reduced fat chocolate baking chips, but I couldn't find any, even after going to 2 different stores, so I just used regular chocolate chips. There's only 1/2 cup in the recipe, so the difference in calories and fat per serving was pretty minimal.

The recipe said to spray with cooking spray and flour the bottom only of the baking pan, but because there's caramel in here, it stuck to the sides of the pan and I had to use a knife to really scrape out the sides. Next time I'd probably spray the sides of the pan as well, and just spray and flour the bottom of the pan.

The recipe says to spread 2/3 of the batter on the bottom of the pan, and it would be thin. Because the batter was so stiff, it would be difficult to "spread" it out across the whole pan, I ended up dropping small amounts all throughout the bottom and spreading it out that way, which made it a little easier to spread along the bottom of the pan.

I think they were cooked slightly too long as well. Next time I'll reduce the final baking time by 5 minutes and I think they'll come out a little softer. They're soft in the middle, but the edges and tops are harder. The recipe says to put the pieces in the microwave for 10 seconds to soften them if you want softer brownies. We ate them while they were still slightly warm (the best way to eat brownies I think), so they were still soft on the inside, but hard around the edges.

However, the flavor of these brownies were very good. We all agreed we liked them a lot and could definitely make them again. I'm going to be serving them to by bed and breakfast guests this afternoon as well. They'll probably never know they're a "light" brownie!

Finally, the recipe says to cut these into 36 pieces, which we feel are much too small, so I cut them into 24 pieces. Yes, we know, more calories and fat, but hey, being a lighter version, it's ok, right?!

19 recipes down, 528 more to go.