Brownie sandwich cookies with salted caramel cream filling

No calories. No butter. No sugar. No real chocolate. No pleasure.

When it comes to brownies I don't compromise. I rather not to bake any than go half way. These are so rich that you probably will get a diabetes only by reading the recipe.

Recipe was found in "Donna Hay" magazine (Spring 2011 issue), but they used peanut butter for the filling. I have to say I was pretty tempted, but as much as I love natural peanut butter I prefer salted caramel when it comes to chocolate cakes combos. If you like it too please check out my chocolate fondant with salted caramel sauce. 

I reduced sugar in the recipe and changed some other quantities as well as method (bain marie is safer than melting chocolate in a pan on the hob).

If you don't like to compromise when it comes to chocolate I am sure you will enjoy these.

Makes about 16

For salted caramel:

¾ cup sugar
5 tbsp water
4 tbsp butter 
¼ cup double cream
½tsp salt

For cookies:

350g plain chocolate, finely chopped (I used 70% cocoa solids)
3 tbsp butter
3 small eggs
½ cup of sugar
1tsp real vanilla extract
 ¼ cup of plain flour
¼ tsp baking powder

For the cream filling:

250g butter, unsalted
1½ cup icing sugar
salted caramel

First prepare salted caramel. Place sugar and water in a pan, keep over medium heat and stir until sugar has dissolved, bring to the boil and as from now do not stir! If any crystals form on the side of the pan brush them with a wet silicone spatula. You can move the mixture from time to time by shaking the pan using handle, but remember - no stirring at this point. after few minutes the mixture will start to change the colour from a light to dark amber. This is the moment when you should take it off the heat and mix salt, cream and butter in. Stir thoroughly, be careful as it bubbles a lot. Set aside to cool down and prepare the cookies.

Place 200g of chocolate in a bowl together with a butter and place onto a pan with boiling water, making sure the bowl does not touch the hot water. Basically melt the chocolate with the butter in bain marie. When melted set aside to cool down and heat the oven to 180C.

Beat the eggs with the sugar until pale and fluffy with a mixer. Add sieved flour, baking powder, mix and then add melted chocolate with butter and the remaining 150g of chopped chocolate. Set aside for 10 minutes.

Line a baking tray with some baking paper and spoon one tbsp of chocolate mixture onto it saving some space, between them, as they will expand little bit.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, not longer! don't be tempted to bake it longer even if you think cookies look too soft. They will continue to cook even outside the oven for little while, so if you bake them for longer than 10 minutes you will end up with hard rock unpleasant cookies. We want soft with melted chocolate bits in. When they are cooling down prepare the filling.

Using a mixer beat the butter with icing sugar until fluffy and then add cool salted caramel. Have to admit - mine was little bit too hard, so I heated it and it was too warm for the butter. It melted the butter when I was mixing it, but I managed to rescue it with placing the mixing bowl in the fridge and mixing every few minutes. The butter incorporated into the caramel eventually.

To assemble the cookies spread a generous amount of cream filling onto one cookie and cover with another one.

Bon appetite!