Time to share another of my favourite family recipes. This chocolate and caramel traybake was one my mum made often and is one I've made over and over. It is easy and reliable which is what you want when you need to make a little something when people are coming round or when you need cakes for a bake sale. 

Chocolate and Caramel Traybake - there's an easy to print version of the recipe here

makes 24 squares

• 150g (5oz) butter or margarine

• 100g (4oz) chocolate

• 2 eggs

• 4oz brown sugar

• 4oz self raising flour

• 1 heaped teaspoon coco powder

• 4 tablespoons caramel sauce (I always use Nestle Carnation Caramel, this recipe uses about 1/2 the tin. You could substitute any dulce de leche type sauce or see below for more substitution ideas *)

Heat the oven to 160 c , Gas 4, 320 f

Line an 18cm x 28cm (7" x 11") tin with baking paper. You can also cook this recipe successfully in an 8” square tin

Melt the butter/marg and chocolate in the microwave in a small bowl.

Beat the eggs and sugar in a large bowl. I use an electric hand whisk but if you have a large food mixer that would be perfect too.

Add the flour, coco powder and the chocolate mix and stir in gently.

Spoon the mix into the tin and smooth a little.

Using a teaspoon, dollop the caramel sauce into the mixture in blobs. Give the blobs a quick swirl, but don't overdo it, you want blobs of caramel in the finished cake.

Bake in the oven for 30 - 40 minutes. When it's done the cake will have just started to shrink away from the sides of the tin, and when you press the centre gently with your finger it will spring back up. Also you can stick a knife or skewer in the centre it will pull out without lots of uncooked mixture on it when it’s done. However if you get a bit with gooey caramel it can be hard to tell with this method, that's why with this traybake I tend to go for the 'press with my finger' method of checking.

Leave it in the tin to cool, then turn it out then cut it up into 24 pieces.

It is essential to line the tin or you’ll never get it out in one piece!

I usually just finish the traybake by dusting it with a little icing sugar. You could drizzle a little melted chocolate or even ice it if you like. It's pretty sweet already though so I don't ice it. (translation: when I say ice I mean frosting. Here in the UK if we say ice a cake we mean put icing/frosting on it!) 

Here’s a version of the traybake I made for my husband for our 28th wedding anniversary. A cake is just a small token gift but after 28 years we are pretty chilled about things like that!! I did some rather lopsided decoration with just a simple glace icing in a bit of a hurry. To make glace icing you just mix enough icing/powdered sugar with a teaspoon of water to make a thick paste.

The heart shaped tin I used is 9” x 9” (23cm x 23cm)

Here's the easy print version of the recipe.

Substitutions for Chocolate and Caramel Traybake:

* If you can't get hold of the Nestle Caramel stuff, you can substitute any thick caramel or dulce de leche style sauce. (It is possible to buy the wrong stuff and find you have bought ordinary condensed milk by mistake. Not me obviously!!) Or you can just miss it out altogether.

You could even sling some chocolate chips in the mix instead like I did here with these white chocolate chips, I just swirled them in gently at the same stage the caramel is normally added as this seems to stop them all sinking to the bottom. They are now double chocolate traybakes rather than chocolate and caramel traybakes of course! 

My mum called these brownies, but they've not got that super soft and slightly unbaked insides like brownies can have so I definitely think they are better defined as a traybake! Maybe you could let me know what you'd call them if you do give them a try. 

Julie

I'll be sharing this recipe at some of these link ups