Fail: Salted Caramel Brownies

I'm a decent baker which means that most of the time, when I try new recipes, they come out alright. These brownies are one of my more recent, yet still edible, failures which just shows that there's always more things to learn.

This recipe for salted caramel brownies has the potential to be oh so good, provided you don't make oh so many alterations. I made my own caramel, instead of using store-bought, which could have something to do with the lack of visual presence of caramel on these brownies. Also, I think I spread the caramel instead of swirling it, which could have lead to some problems.

Basically, I suspect the spread out caramel soaked into the brownie batter which somehow made the toothpick placed into the center never come out clean. This eventually lead to non-swirled, subtly caramel-flavored, slightly burnt brownies. Hence the weird craters on the top and the black undersides. C'est la vie.