If you saw my video of me making these miso caramel brownies, you will have seen that everything went wrong.
I had the plan for these…a vision. Nothing went to plan. BUT THESE ENDED UP BEING THE BEST TASTING BROWNIES I HAVE EVER MADE.
So I felt like I needed to post the recipe. They didn’t look the way I wanted them too, but the taste was so good!
Video Tutorial
Miso in desserts?
If you’ve never heard of or had miso before. It’s a Japanese seasoning that is made from fermenting soybeans.
Most of the time it is used in cooking.
Recently, I’ve been seeing a lot of people use it in desserts, especially cookies. So I wanted to try.
Here’s the thing, I haven’t had a lot of foods that have miso in. So I assumed that miso would kind of just act like salt; I thought it would add a little salty flavour to desserts.
I WAS SO WRONG. I made miso caramel for the first time a few months ago. My mind was blown.
Yes it add saltiness, but it also added such a deep flavour that I don’t know how to describe. It’s like salty, but also tangy and also toasty…it’s just so good.
I’ve done a terrible job at describing the taste. Just imagine salted caramel but with 10x more flavour!
Ingredients for the brownie batter
Here are the ingredients you are going to need to make the brownie batter:
- Unsalted butter – usually I say that salted butter works too. But for these, the miso is already adding saltiness. So for the brownie, we want to be able to control the amount of salt in it. So unsalted butter works best.
- Dark chocolate – using melted chocolate in brownies gives you extra fudginess. Make sure to use dark chocolate, milk chocolate will just add extra sweetness and not enough chocolate flavour.
- Eggs
- Sugar – I like to use a mixture of brown and white sugar. The brown sugar makes the brownies fudgy, the white sugar adds some chewiness.
- Plain flour – also known as all-purpose flour.
- Cocoa powder – it’s always best to use unsweetened cocoa powder for brownies.
- Salt – just a little bit to help enhance the flavours.
The miso caramel
I’ve learnt that a lot of people find caramel making scary….understandable to be honest. The first time I made caramel, I was not prepared for the amount of steam I saw.
So for this recipe, I wanted to keep it simple.
Instead of making the caramel from scratch, I used soft caramels. I used Werther’s Original ones, but any soft caramels will work.
All you need to do is add this into a pot along with some cream and your miso. Then just heat this until the mixture is smooth and melted.
Can I just buy caramel sauce and add miso to it?
From my experience, swirling a buying caramel sauce and then swirling it into brownie batter doesn’t always work.
I don’t if this happens to other people, but for me, my brownies alway just ends up too wet, it will be fully cooked, but wet…if that makes sense.
So I wouldn’t recommend buying a regular caramel sauce. The caramel we’re making for this is a little thicker.
Leaving the brownie to chill
In the recipe, I’ve wrote that you need to leave the brownie to chill in the fridge for an hour before taking it out of the tin and cutting into it.
I’ve learnt from making a lot of brownies, that leaving them to chill will give you the best results.
When you take brownies out of the oven, they are typically slightly underbaked. This helps with the fudginess.
So if you try taking them out of the tin and cutting them too early, they can end up falling apart, or they might even seem raw.
It’s best to leave them to chill so they can set up properly.
I guess this is optional though, but I very much recommend it.
Here are some more brownie recipes I think you need to try:
Miso
Caramel Brownies
Ingredients
- For the miso caramel:
200g soft caramels
100ml double cream
1-2 tablespoons white miso paste, add this to taste
- For the brownie:
180g unsalted butter
120g dark chocolate
4 eggs
150g brown sugar
150g granulated sugar
80g plain flour
40g cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
Some extra chopped chocolate to sprinkle on top, this is optional
Directions
- Making the miso caramel:
- Place your caramels into a pot, along with the cream. Place this over medium heat.
- Keep heating this, whiles stirring, until all the caramels have melted and you get a smooth mixture. Add in the miso, then once this has melted, take the caramel off the heat and leave aside.
- Making the brownie:
- Start by pre-heating your oven to 180c/350f. Also grease and line an 8 inch square cake tin.
- In a pot, add the butter and chocolate. Place this over medium heat and heat until the mixture is all melted and smooth. You could also just do this in your microwave. Leave aside to cool.
- In a large bowl, add the eggs and both sugars. Whip this until the mixture lightens in colour and almost doubles in volume. I do this with an electric mixer, but it can be done by hand, just whisk aggressively.
- Pour the cooled butter/chocolate mixture into this and whisk this in.
- Now add the flour, cocoa powder and salt. Whisk just until you get a smooth batter.
- Add half of this batter into your prepared tin, smooth this out then drizzle about half of the miso caramel over this. Now add the rest of the batter and drizzle the rest of the caramel on top. Swirl everything around with a knife or a skewer.
- Sprinkle some extra chopped chocolate on top, then bake this for around 45 minutes - 1 hour. It is done once a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out with a few moist crumbs on it.
- Once baked, leave it too cool at room temperature for a bit, then place in your fridge for 1 hour.
- After this hour, take it out of the tin, cut into it and enjoy!
