Bertie's Loaded Brownies

"Don't wreck a sublime chocolate experience by feeling guilty." 
- Lora Brody

My mamaw visited her older sister in an assisted living facility and came home raving about the loaded brownies they served.  She went so far as to say, "If I had known Add wasn't going to eat more than a bite of hers, I would have eaten it too!"  That means it was really tasty, since my mamaw eats very little of anything!  She asked me if I could find a recipe for such a thing, and I said if I couldn't I would create one of my own.  So here it is, a compromise between an existing recipe from Betty Crocker's red plaid cookbook (c. 1975) and my own imaginings.  Why reinvent the wheel if you don't have to?

Bertie's Loaded Brownies

I took a picture of the cookbook after I wrote in my modifications.  The first modification I made was to use a larger pan, which means the brownie is much thinner and cooks faster.  If you use the pan size indicated in the original recipe, you will need to use the original cook times as well.  I also omitted the nuts from the cream cheese filling, since there are nuts on top.

Original Recipe with my modifications

Brownies:

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

6 Tb butter or margarine

1/3 cup honey

2 eggs, beaten

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup sifted all-purpose flour (sift then measure)

1/2 tsp baking powder

Filling:

 8 oz cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9x13x2-inch pan with foil, and spray the bottom only with cooking spray. (An easy way to form the foil to the pan is to turn it upside down, lay the shiny side of the foil on the pan, press it around the edges, turn the pan over, insert foil, and crimp edges to pan)

2. Melt chocolate and butter over low heat; stir constantly.  Make sure to heat until it is smooth!  You don't want any solid pieces of chocolate in the brownie batter.  Set it aside to cool while you do the next few steps.

Chocolate chips, butter (cut into "pats")

Chocolate/butter, melted and stirred til smooth

3. Gradually add honey to beaten eggs in a medium bowl.

Beaten eggs, honey added

4. While chocolate continues to cool, cream together cream cheese and sugar.  Once it is smooth, beat in the egg and salt.  (If you want the nuts in the filling instead of on top, add 1/2 cup chopped nuts now)

Cream cheese filling

5. Check chocolate to be sure it is cooled.  If it is not cool before you add it to the eggs/honey, your eggs will start to cook.  Blend chocolate mixture and vanilla into eggs/honey.

Chocolate & egg mixtures

6. Sift together flour and baking powder (yes, you are sifting the flour twice).  Add it to chocolate mixture; stir just until the flour disappears.



Sifted flour, baking powder - sift together



Dry ingredients added to wet

Mixed just til the flour disappeared - if you overmix, the brownie will have the wrong texture

7. Pour half the batter into the pan.  Since you are using a large pan, you will have to be careful not to put too much in at first.  I had about 1/8" depth in my pan, and I had to be careful to make sure the batter was even and covered the bottom of the pan.

8. Bake in preheated oven for 7 minutes.

Bottom "crust" layer, baked

9. Pour filling over partially baked brownie "crust" and spread it carefully so you don't tear up the bottom brownie.

10. Drizzle or spoon the remaining half of batter over the cream cheese filling, and very carefully spread it as best as you can.  You want to have 3 distinct layers rather than a bottom layer and a marbled layer like this recipe calls for.

Cream cheese filling spread out, batter drizzled on top

Batter carefully spread to avoid marbling

11. Return to oven to bake for 20 minutes.  Remove from oven, check for doneness using a wooden toothpick inserted into the center of the brownies.  Cool on an elevated cooling rack, or your extra oven rack propped up on 4 soup cans (this is what I do), until the bottom of the pan is cool to the touch.

Fully baked after 20 minutes.  The cream cheese filling will not be this brown - my lighting was off.

Now, it's time to load up your brownies!

Toppings:

1 cup walnut pieces

1 jar Smucker's Caramel Ice Cream Topping

1 jar Maraschino cherries

1 oz unsweetened baking chocolate

1/4 cup miniature chocolate chips

Cherry glaze (recipe follows step 6)

1. Toast walnuts in a pan over medium-low heat, just until the nuts start to take on a golden color.  You don't want them burnt.  I really don't know how long it took, but I would estimate between 5-10 minutes.  My nuts had been in the freezer, so it might take less time for room temp nuts.  Make sure that you stir the nuts frequently to keep them from burning.

Getting ready to toast

Toasted walnuts

2. Chop the nuts into smallish pieces.  Don't pulverize them (I usually do), because you want to be able to feel it in your mouth, chew it, and have the distinct walnut flavor.

Chopped, not pulverized, nuts

3. Sprinkle nuts evenly on top of cooled brownies.

Nuts sprinkled on brownies

4. Drain (into a measuring glass, reserve liquid), remove stems, and roughly chop the cherries into quarters.  Do not individually slice them into four pieces, but they should be about that size.

Chopped cherries

5. Sprinkle cherries evenly on top of nuts.  Pour the caramel sauce slowly on top of the cherries and nuts.  You don't want to glop it all in one place and then spread it out, because that will move the cherries and nuts.  Instead, drizzle/pour it evenly across the top of the nuts and cherries.

Caramel on top

6. Using a knife, either roughly chop or shave the unsweetened chocolate.  It doesn't have to be curls, but flakes or small pieces will be good.  Sprinkle it on top of the caramel, then sprinkle the mini chips on top as well.

The small shavings are the unsweetened baking chocolate

If you want to make a glaze from the cherry juice, now is the time to do it!  The recipe I modified used cornstarch, which I was not a fan of.  It has a chalky taste when I tasted it by itself.  I have made plain syrup before, so what I am going to recommend is using the cherry juice in place of part of the water in a recipe for making syrup.  The jar of cherries I used had a little more than 1/2 cup, but a little less than 2/3 cup of juice in it.

Glaze:

1/2 cup cherry juice

1 cup sugar

1. Stir the sugar into the juice to dissolve it. 

2. Bring the mixture to a gentle boil, and cook without stirring for 3 minutes. 

3. Then boil for 5 to 10 minutes more, stirring often, until the syrup has thickened and will form itself into a thread about 2 inches long when poured from a spoon back into the pot. 

4. Set the syrup aside to cool.

You can use a candy thermometer for this, but I don't recommend it.  Just test the syrup periodically to see if you are nearing thread.  You will see a thread (and you will be super excited) when the last bit of syrup forms a drip on the tip of the spoon, drips off, and a thread (looks like spider's web) is hanging from the spoon.  As I mentioned above, I did not use this recipe, but I used the same basic principle.

Last drip on the spoon

What is left of the thread I got to form. My phone wasn't fast enough to catch it.

Once you cool the syrup, it will pour like any other syrup.  As it cools, stir it every so often to keep a "skin" from forming on top.  Drizzle it across the top, but do not pour it all.  You don't want the caramel and cherry syrups to compete with each other, you want them to complement each other.

Cooled syrup will pour in a stream like any store-bought syrup

Closeup after cherry syrup.  I didn't put much on it, so you can't really see the redness.

I cut them into 1 1/2 x 1 1/2" squares per serving.  Notice the layers in the brownie.

A word of caution:  These brownies are incredibly rich and very sweet.  You will want to cut them into small squares - 2x2" should be more than large enough - because otherwise you might end up with a belly ache!