Billed as one of the bestsellers in stores that sell such items, the Billionaire Brownie comes in many variations. For my first attempt, I used a recipe from the Magnolia Bakery cookbook, which uses a brown sugar shortbread as the base, a layer of caramel, and then a brownie on top of that. They said more caramel could be added on top, but I’ve never been a big caramel fan, so I veered away from that – and honestly there was more than enough in the middle layer (a whole cup).
The results were spectacular for what was a rather simple recipe. The only time-consuming part was making the shortbread base and letting it cool before all the caramel and brownie mix can go on top. I was worried about double baking the shortbread, but it didn’t burn at all – and the brownies actually had to bake for fifteen minutes longer than the recipe time indicated before they were done (I lost track of how many dirty toothpicks gave their lives for this enterprise).
These sorry photos don’t do the sweet goodness half its due justice.
