Millionaire Brownies
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Millionaire Brownies are a spin-off on millionaire shortbread, a shortbread biscuit that’s topped with caramel and chocolate. Obviously, millionaire brownies are much richer than shortbread!
Mom and I saw something similar on a T.V. show that featured a bakery that makes them. We both agreed that I’d have to post the recipe, because they looked so incredible! (This post may contain Amazon affiliate links for your convenience, at NO additional cost to you.)
Even though I couldn’t find a recipe on the internet, the description was enough to recreate something pretty spectacular! Instead of a layer of shortbread, mom baked up a batch of fudgy brownies from a recipe on King Arthur’s website.
The brownies are topped with a layer of warm caramel, a layer of ganache, and some chopped pecans. I like to use a straight sided baking pan like this one from Amazon. (Affiliate link)
The original millionaire brownies have chopped hazelnuts on them, which I’m sure is delicious, but I prefer pecans.
It’s important to chill each layer before adding the next, so the layers don’t run together. You can melt caramel squares, or make your own caramel. The chocolate ganache is easy to make, taking just a few minutes.
Chocolate Ganache can be chilled until firm and used to make Chocolate Truffles.
Mom buys caramel in bulk but you can certainly use melted caramel squares, thinned with just one tablespoon cream. (Jarred caramel sauce will be too runny). affiliate link.
I hope you enjoy the millionaire brownies. Here is the recipe!
Millionaire Brownies
Ingredients
- 4 large eggs
- 3 3/4 ounces Dutch cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 8 ounces unsalted butter
- 15 3/4 ounces sugar
- 6 1/4 ounces Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
- 12 ounces chocolate chips
- 1 pound caramel squares
- 1 Tablespoon heavy cream for caramel layer
- 2 cups chopped nuts pecans, walnuts or hazelnuts
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9" x 13" pan
- Line pan with parchment paper, for easy removal.
- Crack eggs into a bowl, add cocoa, salt, baking powder, and vanilla, and beat until smooth.
- In a medium-sized saucepan set over low heat, melt butter, then add sugar and stir to combine. Continue to heat, just until mixture is hot (about 110°F), but not bubbling; it'll become shiny as you stir. Heating the mixture to this point will dissolve more of the sugar, which will yield a shiny top crust on your brownies.
- Add hot butter/sugar mixture to the egg/cocoa mixture, stirring until smooth.
- Add flour and chips, stirring until smooth.
- Spoon batter into prepared pan.
- Bake brownies for 30 minutes, until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean, or with a few moist crumbs clinging to it. Brownies should feel set on the edges, and the center should look moist, but not uncooked. Remove pan from oven and cool.
- Top cooled brownies with warm caramel. For caramel layer, melt caramel squares with 1 Tablespoon heavy cream, stirring until smooth. Chill until caramel is set.
- Top brownies with warm ganache. Sprinkle with chopped pecans. Chill until set.
Nutrition
Top the millionaire brownies with chocolate ganache.
Chocolate Ganache
Ingredients
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 8 ounces chopped chocolate or chocolate morsels
Instructions
- In a medium saucepan over a low heat, melt 1 cup heavy cream.
- Stir in chopped chocolate, stirring until smooth.
Some of the items I used for this post. (This is an affiliate link of which I make a small percentage, at no additional cost to you which helps off-set the cost of running this site. Thank you!)
Caramel in bulk. This is great if you’re making caramel apples for the holidays.
I love this straight-sided baking baking pan for sharp edges.
I really needed to save time with multiple food items to make. I used a box brownie mix & a can of Dulce De Leche. I did make the ganache and these brownies are fabulous. Thank you for a great recipe.
glad you found an easy way to make it work for you!
Looks delicious! Now tell me ; can these be frozen , if there are any left?
I don’t see why not? The caramel would need to come to room temperature before eating.
Hi I’m Cathy can u tell me how to read this in cups please
for the flour, it’s about 1 1/2 cups. The sugar is a little less than 2 cups. Hope that helps!
I just made these brownies… delicious! The brownie recipe was amazing. I was a little confused on the ingredients list. Is the first list for the brownies and caramel and not the ganache? I used all 12 ounces in the brownies and then an additional 8 ounces in the ganache. This tasted amazing! I had issues with my caramel. I used 1 tablespoon of heavy cream with my caramel and it hardened a lot on the brownies, so they were very difficult to eat since it was trying to bite through a tough layer of caramel. Do you have any suggestions on how to make the caramel softer? I was invisioning similar to the ganache so that it was one smooth bite. I will definitely make this again, maybe without the caramel if I can’t figure it out.
Hi Kristen, I’m wondering if you cooked the caramel too long? Just a minute or two in either direction can make it either too hard or two soft. The caramel in mine was pretty soft and kind of dripped down a bit. I can see the confusion with the ganache. It’s actually a separate recipe on the very bottom of the post. (I’ve also gone back and bolded the links where ganache is featured elsewhere on my site.) Hope that helps?
Thank you for the recipe! Are the chocolate chips supposed to be semi-sweet or milk chocolate? Also, is this something that can be made the day before?
You can use whatever kind of chip you like. I prefer semi-sweet because they aren’t as sweet as milk chocolate.
I am questionnng the 15 3/4 ounces of sugar! Is this correct.? I noticed that you also omitted the words either Heavy cream or just cream for caramel layer.
yes, it’s correct…if it were in cups instead of ounces, it would be 2 1/4 cup. yes, 1 tablespoon heavy cream to thin out the caramel.
How are ounces compared to a cup? Very confusing with sugar cocoa and flour..but they sound good just wont make them if cant get cups
Hi Martha,
The reason for weighing everything is that cups are less accurate than weight. For example, cocoa is about 3 ounces per cup, whereas flour is more like 4 1/4 ounces per cup. I’ve included a ingredient weight chart which should help. I hope that helps.https://www.kingarthurflour.com/learn/ingredient-weight-chart
Will the Carmel stay soft two or three days out of baking? Should they be stored in refrigerator or on counter? Just concerned about Carmel getting too hard. Thank you.
I usually keep them in a container on the counter. They’ve never lasted longer than 2 days, and, yes, the caramel stayed soft.
You had me all the way up until I saw you were using caramel chews. With caramel being so easy to make, why not from scratch? Oh wait, your mom cooked these…do you even do anything besides just copy and paste?
Hi Rhonda, If you read my post, you would see that I not only said you could use homemade caramel, I linked to my homemade caramel recipe. Not everyone wants to make caramel from scratch, so that was an option. Not sure what you meant about “copy and paste”. Nothing here is “copy and pasted”. I made them myself using King Arthur’s recipe for brownies and added all the other ingredients myself. But thanks for the one star. Please make them before you give something a one star review. Have a great day!