Potluck Food Part 2: Caramel Brownies

I love recipes, and my local grocery store, Schnucks, gives them away for free. These are beautiful full color recipe cards pre-punched to fit in their binders (you buy the binder) with a shopping list on the front.  They also frequently have someone on hand with samples.  Its a great marketing tactic, and more than once I've picked up a sample, picked up a card, and gone walking through the store with my shopping list at hand.

In fact, I did so Saturday. Along with my cheesy potato casserole, I decided to make a dessert for the not-a Superbowl-party-potluck. There can never be too many desserts. And today's sample recipe included Caramel Brownie Bars.  Yum. I had to upsize the recipe a bit (the original made an 8x8 pan, and that's just cruel at a large party)

Ingredients:

• 1 9x13" pan-sized fudge brownie mix, plus eggs & oil (See box for directions)
• 1 bag caramel candies (about 11 ounces)
• 1 1/2 cup cocktail peanuts, coarsely chopped.
• 1 1/2 cup mini pretzels, coarsely broken (put in a ziplock bag and hand to a preschooler...)
• 1 cup mini marshmallows
• 8 ounces chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Bake brownies in a 9x13 pan according to package directions.
2. Set brownies aside to cool. In a microwave-safe bowl, warm the (unwrapped) caramels with about 2 Tbsp of water in 30 second intervals, stirring, until you have a nice pourable caramel sauce.
3. Spread about half of the caramel over the brownies.
4. Onto the sticky caramel, sprinkle the nuts, the pretzels and the mini marshmallows.
5. You can either melt the chocolate chips down and drizzle the chocolate over the rest of the candy pieces, or else just sprinkle the chips whole. If your brownies are still hot, then the chips will melt anyway :)
6. Drizzle the rest of your caramel sauce on top.

No, these are not light. Or sugar free. Or low fat. Or anything like that. They are also darned sticky, so have a firm (not plastic) knife on hand to cut them, and plenty of wet wipes to clean up afterwards.