Miss Reynold's Always Fail Brownies

This recipe has been staring me in the face for 20 years now. Miss Reynold's was one of my favorite high school teachers and became a very dear friend. She made the brownies for one of our Student Council meetings once and I begged for the recipe. I slipped it into my small recipe collection at the time and always vowed that one day I would make them. Well I finally did.

They were everything I remembered them to be and since I made them with my children on a particularly cold snow day this week, it was even more fun and special.
Miss Reynold's was my freshman English teacher and later my Student Council sponsor. She introduced me to Anne of Green Gables and completely changed my life. Thank you Miss Reynolds. ☺

Sorry there are no step by step pictures but you were lucky there was one left to take a photo of. These were gone pretty fast!

Miss Reynold's Always Fail Brownies

1 box German Chocolate Cake Mix

1 cup chopped nuts

1/3 cup evaporated milk (or regular milk if that is all you have)

3/4 cup butter

1 (14 oz) package Caramels (about 50 of them) (*or make your own when you get everything in the pan and discover someone ate the caramels without tellin' you!)

1/3 cup Evaporated milk (again whole milk works)

1 cup chocolate chips

Melt caramels and 1/3 cup milk. Keep warm.

Combine cake mix, butter, nuts, and 1/3 cup milk.

Press half of this into the bottom of a greased 9"x13" pan.

Bake at 350 deg F for 6 minutes.

Remove pan from oven and sprinkle chocolate chips all over.

Next pour the hot caramel over all.

Crumble the remaining batter over the caramel.

Return to oven and bake for 16 minutes.

Cool well before cutting. (This is the hardest part! We had to put ours in the freezer to speed the process up.)

** We got to the melt caramel part (after we had the cake part ready) and discovered that SOMEONE!! had eaten the caramels I THOUGHT were in the pantry. We were NOT going to be cheated out of our "Miss Reynold's Never Fail Brownies". So...... we made our own batch of caramel from scratch. Yes we are that crazy. So here is my mom's caramels recipe and it is TO DIE FOR! I used half the recipe in the brownies and poured the rest into a 9" cake pan and saved them for later.

Mom's Like See's Caramels

That Won't Stick To Your Teeth

3 cups white sugar

3 cups cream (or evaporated milk)

1 1/3 cup white corn syrup

1 cup butter

16 level Tbsp flour

1 tsp vanilla

Combine sugar, syrup and 1 1/2 cups cream. Bring to a boil Add the remaining cream very slowly, so it doesn't stop boiling. Cook to the soft ball stage. (this will take a long time).

Combine the melted butter and the flour, 1 Tbsp at a time, add to the boiling mixture, stirring constantly until it forms a hard ball when tested in cold water.

(Hardness of the ball is determined by how hard you want the caramels to be.)

Add the vanilla and nuts if desired. Pour in a buttered pan.

(An 8" square pan makes candy about 1 1/2" thick. A 9 x 13" pan might be better.)

When cool, cut into squares.

(My mom and I like this recipe with a pinch or two of salt. Candy without salt has a flat taste. The salt compliments the flavor of the butter and cream. Give it a try!)