We were going to a special event on Saturday (a wedding celebration for my brother, Jeff, and new Sis-in-Law, Terri 🙂 ), and I didn’t want to go empty-handed.  I had figured on taking the usual “Jodi’s Almost Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies” because the kiddos really love them.

But I wanted to make something else special and yummy for the occasion.  I was watching one of my cooking “heroes,” Ree Drumond aka The Pioneer Woman, in the morning and was inspired by her Crazy Brownie recipe.

So I checked the baking shelf (which needed cleaning out desperately – so it led to that!)  Think I have enough stuff???!!

And set out to make my own brownies.  I used some of her tricks, including a box of Duncan Hines Devil’s Food Cake for the base to which I added 1/3 of a cup of evaporated milk and a stick of melted butter.

I pressed about 2/3 of that into the bottom of my round baking dish.  (I’ve always loved to bake my brownies in a round dish – my BFF Jill got me started on that years ago I think….)

Then I had all of these caramels in a Ziploc bag ALREADY unwrapped from some other baking project from who knows when, so I figured I would melt them with the rest of the evaporated milk and make a caramel gooey layer.

It starts like this….

and turns into this yummy goodness!

So I layered that on, sprinkled it with a layer of sea salt, added the rest of the batter in blobs (technical term) on top of it, then a sprinkling of chopped black walnuts, some leftover shaved chocolate and a smidge more sea salt.

It went in the oven looking like this:

and came out like this:

and was pretty amazing when I cut into it…

Yummy, sweet, salty, gooey goodness!

at Life In Between.

Cheers & Hugs,

Jodi