I have had this recipe on my calendar for ages, but I have kept pushing it back because I didn’t know what to pair it with. Then I found the Individual Beef Wellington with Mushroom Sauce recipe, and I instantly knew Baby Chai Caramel Fudgey Brownie Cakes were what I had been waiting for. Individual servings of the main course followed by individual servings of dessert? Perfection!
Fudgey Brownie Cake made into muffin sized portions with Chai Buttercream Frosting and a drizzle of Homemade Salted Caramel
The Ingredients
I’m not really into baking, but I was surprised by how many ingredients I had on hand. The fresh items like milk, cream, and eggs had to be bought. I also didn’t have the dark chocolate chunks on hand and had to top off my vanilla extract. Still, I think I did pretty well since the list of ingredients for everything is pretty long.
The Process
This dessert took me a total of 1 hour to make. Actually, it’s really three recipes:
- salted caramel sauce
- brownie cakes
- chai buttercream
The salted caramel recipe is linked from the brownie and buttercream recipe. I’m not sure why it’s separate, but be sure you don’t miss it. It’s waaaay better than the stuff in a jar!
Salted Caramel Sauce
I started things off by making the caramel sauce since it had to cool. The instructions were easy to follow, and I appreciated the warning about adding the butter at Step 9. Everything went smoothly, though, and I had the caramel sauce made and cooling in no time.
One thing that the recipe didn’t say was the type of saucepan to use. I like my non-stick saucepan for caramel sauce because it’s so much easier to pour. It’s also much easier to clean once the pan has cooled. I’m sure I’m stating the obvious, but caramel sauce is extremely sticky!
Brownie Cakes
Next up was the brownie cakes. This recipe makes 10, so I had a couple of empty spots in my muffin tin. Making these was also easy, but I did have to hunt through the ingredients list to find the amounts needed. It would have been helpful if the ingredients were listed in the order needed.
I noticed that the batter was really thick. I didn’t really give it much thought, though, since I expected it to level while it was baking. As you can see from the photo below, it really didn’t level at all. My brownie cakes were very lumpy when I took them out of the oven. They looked almost the same as when I put them in. I suppose I could have leveled them, but I decided to go with the lumpiness since they would be topped with frosting.
Chai Buttercream
Speaking of frosting, that also went smoothly. The only mistake I noticed was the instructions didn’t say when to add the pinch of salt. I added it with the vanilla and butter. Anyhoo, a lot of mixing in my stand mixer and 3 cups of powdered sugar later, I had the buttercream ready.
It seemed like it was a typical buttercream consistency as I spooned it into the piping bag, and it was easy to pipe onto the brownie cakes. I wasn’t aiming for bakery perfection as these cakes seemed kind of rustic, but I did notice the frosting seemed a little droopy.
Thinking it was my imagination, I frosted the rest of the brownie cakes, drizzled them with the caramel sauce, and put them into the refrigerator. The next day I found that the buttercream looked like it had melted. It didn’t affect the taste at all, it just looked like I hadn’t refrigerated them. I didn’t mind, but it’s something to keep in mind if you’re making these ahead of time.
