Give Your Browines A Rich, Caramel Flavor With A Swirl Of Cajeta

If there's one dessert that will transport you back to childhood, it's a classic chocolate brownie. From either a box or scratch, these chewy, fudgy chocolate cake bars just satisfy your sweet tooth better than other treats. You might be thinking that it's impossible to improve on perfection, but you'd be wrong. Give your brownies a Mexican flair with one of the country's signature sauces.

Add a swirl of cajeta, a caramelly Mexican sauce made with goat's milk, to take your brownies to the next level. This sauce has the "Midas Touch" — it turns everything it touches into pure gold. A drizzle of cajeta can impart a nutty, rich quality to any dish. Some equate it to dulce de leche, which is made with cow's milk. The biggest difference between dulce de leche and cajeta is their flavor. While the former has a buttery flavor, cajeta has a deeper, more savory quality. Either of these sweet sauces would enhance a chocolate brownie, but cajeta will bring a signature tang from the goat's milk that you won't find elsewhere.

Why not skip dry, crumbly baked goods and instead opt for something completely different by adding a cajeta swirl to your batter? Incorporating cajeta into your brownies does add an extra step to the baking process, but it's quick, and you won't regret it.

Start with a basic homemade brownie recipe and make your batter as you normally would. For the cajeta portion of the process, you can either mix the sauce with cream cheese or leave it in its pure form. Either way, you'll have to swirl that filling into the chocolate batter in layers. To do so, spoon half of the batter into the bottom of your pan, then spread some of the filling on top and cover it with more batter. Dollop on one more layer of filling, and then swirl the layers with a toothpick to create a marbling effect.

Be careful not to overbake these brownies. It's an easy mistake to make, as the cajeta stays wet for some time and is easily confused with raw batter. Check the brownies for doneness in multiple locations, just to be safe.