As a cereal, I find cornflakes a little underwhelming. Their pleasant, mild corn flavour, and crunch just sort of gets lost in a bowl of milk. But they have so much potential when being used in other ways. They make a great breading to roll chicken in, they are wonderful folded into some marshmallow and chocolate chip cookies.
For these brownies, crunchy cornflakes get toasted with malt powder so their nutty, toasty flavours are developed and deepened. Then they are enrobed in salty caramel and spread overtop of a layer of rich brownies. They wind up having a great range of textures: the caramel is chewy, the cornflakes are crispy, the brownie is dense and fudgy. Everything is sweet & salty. Using a nice dark chocolate provides a little bitterness, to play against the richness of these, and the salt is nice for balancing the sweetness. I like a good amount of salt in these, but dial in your salt level to suit yourself.
I recommend cutting them into very small pieces; they are pretty rich.
If you can’t find malt powder, you can leave it out. But it does deepen the toasty-toffee flavours if you use it.
caramel cornflake brownies
Inspired by Crumbs and Doilies
brownies
6 ounces semisweet or dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
¼ cup plus 2 tbs butter
⅓ cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
⅓ cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
A big pinch flaky salt
Line an 8”x8” pan with parchment paper. Heat oven to 350° F.
Melt butter and chocolate together in a double boiler over low heat (or in the microwave in 15 second bursts, stirring between heating). Add in sugars and vanilla. Stir in eggs.
Gently fold in flour with a spatula, stopping when the flour is just incorporated. Spread batter into the prepared pan and sprinkle with flaky salt. Cover the top with tinfoil to prevent the caramel from over cooking. Cook for about 25-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center no longer comes out with wet batter on it (a few moist crumbs on the toothpick are ok as long as you don’t see liquid batter). It’s better to err a little on the side of under-baked to avoid having the brownies turn out cakey.
Cool brownies in the pan until they are room temperature, or chill in the fridge.
crunchy corn flakes
1 ⅔ cup cornflakes
2 tbs malt powder
2 tbs sugar
2 tbs butter, melted
Toss everything together until the cornflakes are evenly coated in malt, sugar and butter. Toast on a cookie sheet at 350° F until golden and fragrant, about 10 minutes. Set aside.
caramel
½ cup sugar
3 tbs butter
⅓ cup cream
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp flaky salt
Cook sugar in a medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly, until sugar is evenly melted and golden brown. Remove the pan from the heat and carefully add cream, stirring quickly. The sugar will bubble up a lot and it may harden. Keep stirring and return the pan to low heat until sugar re-disolves. Add butter, salt and vanilla and stir until smoothly combined. Return to a medium-high heat and cook until the caramel reaches 180°C/350°F on a candy thermometer.
Stir the cornflakes into the caramel until evenly coated. Spread caramel-cornflake mixture over top of the cooled brownies, using an offset spatula to even out the cornflake layer. Make sure to get cornflakes into the corners. Sprinkle with another pinch of flaky salt if you like.
Let the brownies cool completely. Slice into teeny squares - or whatever size squares you like, I’m not the boss of you.
