Chocolate Stout Brownies

Or the dark, chocolaty truffle dense-ness that has been smothered in a quarter inch of ganache made solely with beer, butter and chocolate.   AKA – the only chocolate you need to consume this whole week, AKA – I lost the stout but came out with HOLY SHIT CHOCOLATE. 

Or, in other words, I should warn you.  These brownies here?  They are chocolaty.  CHOC-O-LAT-TY.  I hope you read that as individual syllables, loud and harsh, because then you’ll get my seriousness of this matter.  Now, don’t mistake this seriousness to imply that these brownies aren’t good.  Because they are delicious.  They are quite honestly dark, chocolaty, truffle dense deliciousness.  But Guinness brownies they are not.

And to me, that was a disappointment.  See, I made these brownies to bring to my really cool friend who lives in Milwaukee.  My really cool friend who lives in Milwaukee and works at MillerCoors (like, you know, the beer company) and will soon be moving out to California to continue working at MillerCoors.  Now, I know as a beer company employee, he’ll still have plenty of beer, but this is a boy who really loves his stout, his IPA’s, his lagers.  Which, consequently, Milwaukee really loves too.  A little bit more so than, let’s say, Southern California.  And I know he’s going to miss it, so I wanted to give him beer.  In a brownie.  That’s not such a weird thing to want, right??

So, fail on that front.  However, on the front of I drank a little more than I should have, these are fantastic the morning after. Chocolate cures hangovers, right?

Chocolate Stout Brownies
Adapted from Bon Appetit's Feb. 2012

These did not earn a hallowed spot in the BGCB. Absolutely delicious, yes. But anything with this much chocolate and butter usually is, right? Plus, as mentioned above, I lost the stout. And if I'm going to put a recipe called chocolate stout brownies in my big green cookbook, I want it to shout stout.

1 c. stout (I used Guinness)
16 oz. bittersweet chocolate, divided
1 c. unsalted butter
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1 1/2 c. sugar
3 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 c. AP flour
1 1/2 tsp. salt, divided

For the brownies: preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9x9 pan with foil, leaving an overhang. You are going to use the overhang to pull the brownies out later. In a medium sauce pan over medium heat, bring stout to a boil. Keep at a gentle boil until reduce by half. Here's a trick. Dip a toothpick in the stout initially and mark how far the liquid comes up to. Use that as your measuring stick to find out when you've reduced by half. You need to end up with a 1/2 cup reduced stout. This will be divided equally between the brownies and the ganache.

Set up a double boiler (I used a glass bowl set over a simmering pot of water. Don't let the water touch the bottom of the bowl!) In bowl, mix 1 cup butter (2 sticks) and 16 oz. of chocolate, coarsely chopped. Stirring occasionally, melt the chocolate butter until smooth. Try your best not to drink it.

In separate bowl, whisk together sugar, eggs and vanilla. Slowly, whisk in chocolate and butter mixture, followed by 1/4 cup of reduced stout and 1 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Next, slowly fold in all purpose flour. Do not over mix. Pour brownies into prepared pan. Bake for 35-40 minutes. Brownies are done when the top begins to crack and the edges pull away from the sides of the pan. A toothpick stuck in the middle will come out with a few moist crumbs clinging. Remove from oven and let cool on wire rack 20-30 minutes will preparing ganache.

Again in double boiler, melt remaining 4 oz. of chocolate coarsely chopped and 2 tablespoons of butter until smooth. Remove from heat. Add remaining 1/4 cup of reduced stout. Stir in 1/4 teaspoon of salt, whisk until blended. Pour ganache over cooled brownies, spreading and tilting pan as necessary to make sure it's even. Let sit until ganache firms, about 45 minutes. Use foil over hang to remove brownies from pan and slice. Enjoy your chocolate amazingness!

CL's Classic Fudge Brownies

I wasn't planning on posting today.  I was actually planning to bust this out tomorrow.  But then I realized that only a bad person posts about fudgy, chocolaty, dense, gooey goodness on Ash Wednesday.  Cool people, on the other hand, blog about it on Fat Tuesday, aka Mardi Gras, aka this day used to mean a chocolate waterfall and bananas fosters in the dining hall and I really miss that.  As it is, my Mardi Gras celebration is looking like a sandwich after some exercising after work.  Don't say I don't lead an exciting life.  Maybe I'll steal some of the chocolate I bought Ben for Valentine's day that he left here... just don't tell him.

The background story here is that this recipe won Cooking Light's Best Chocolate Recipe Ever contest, as seen in their January 2012 issue.  That is 25 years of chocolate recipes my friends, and this here, this was number one.  Those are quite the accolades, and for the most part, it lived up to expectations.  They were intensely chocolaty.  They somehow straddled the line between being immensely dense and gooey, yet somehow ridiculously crumbly.  It probably needed more time to cool in the pan, but this was Valentine's day dessert and dinner was over and we have no patience.  I attempted to cut them into squares and it was a complete failure.  So instead, we ended up fork-fighting over the pan, jabbing dangerously close to each other's fingers to claim clumps of fudgy brownie for ourselves.  And each bite was delicious.

The next morning, once they had cooled, what was left of the brownies cut a little better and maintained their shape, somewhat.  The chunks of dark chocolate were heavenly, extremely hot just out of the oven, but creamy once cooled.  This is where you need to break out some good chocolate, because it is worth it.  Especially if you're giving up chocolate for lent.  Which, in case you forgot, begins tomorrow.

However, despite all my chocolate haze induced praises, I'm not quite sure if they are big green cookbook worthy.  They crumbled a lot, a lot.  Although, the original recipe called for a metal 9x9 pan, which I don't own, so I went with glass and increased the time and temperature, which may have contributed to the crumbliness.  Also, the recipe called for walnuts.  I am a firm believe in the mantra that nuts do not belong in brownies, so I omitted them and you can judge me if you must.  And finally, CL did it's clever little trick to make these brownies healthy.  They call for 20, TWENTY, servings out of a 9x9 pan.  It's like when Pepsi gives you a bottle with 2.5 servings in it.  You know you're drinking the whole thing, don't lie to me.  Just give it to me straight.  Don't expect to get 20 servings out of these, or rather, don't expect to eat only 1 of their servings.  But then remember that today is Fat Tuesday, and that Fat is in the name, and demolishing a pan of brownies is basically to be expected...

CL's Classic Fudge Brownies
Winner in the January 2012 issue

3/4 c. all-purpose flour
1 c. granulated sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar
3/4 c. unsweetened cocoa
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
6 oz bittersweet chocolate, divided
1/3 c. 1% milk
6 Tbsp. butter, melted
1 tsp. vanillas extract
2 large eggs, beaten

Preheat oven to 350°F.  Spray 9x9 metal baking pan with cooking spray.

In large bowl, mix flour, sugars, cocoa, baking powder and salt.  Chop 3 oz. of chocolate into small chunks.  Toss in flour mixture.  Set aside.  Combine remaining  3 oz of chopped chocolate and milk in small microwave bowl.  Microwave in small bursts of 30 seconds, stirring in between, until chocolate is melted and smooth.  Add melted butter, vanilla and beaten eggs.  Beat well.  Pour into flour mixture and stir until just combined.

Pour batter into prepared pan.  Put into 350°F oven and bake 25-30 minutes.  Brownies are done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out with only a few crumbs clinging.  Cool (if you can wait!) in the pan.  Cut into 20 pieces (ha!).  Eat at least 12.  Enjoy!

Caramel Brownies

If there was a fugly award for brownies, these guys would win it hands down.  The sad thing is, when I opened my September Cooking Light issue, these were by far the prettiest.  A thick, fudgey brownie with an almost as thick gooey caramel layer and a sexy dark chocolate drizzle over top.  These, obviously, are no where near that picture.  These, in my own personal opinion, were butt ugly.  However, somehow they managed to taste better than I even thought they would from looking at the pretty, touched up magazine picture.  I'm not quite sure what happened, but surprisingly something good did result.

I say surprisingly because I didn't know how in the world these guys were going to come together while I was making them.  There was about 2 minutes of pride in the beginning, followed by a few hours of uneasy worrying.  Pride because all of a sudden I realized that I had just made my very own brownie mix and the world was all rosy colored and grand.  And then uneasy worrying as everything went downhill from there. 

You know when you get something from the menu at McDonald's and you never really expect it to look like the picture because past experience has taught you to know better?  I guess I haven't learned that yet with my Cooking Light.  This isn't the first time that I have felt betrayed by the magazine, but at least this time the end results were edible.  It's almost enough to make you question whether or not they actually test run their recipes before printing them.  But the must, right?  They have to, right?  Otherwise how would they get the pretty pictures?  Like the one that looks absolutely nothing like the brownies I just made?  It's really a mystery. 

Anyways, here are my thoughts.  The brownies took about 4 times longer to cook then they suggested.  The caramel coating isn't as thick as it was supposed to be, but that's ok.  I actually think it might have had too much butter in it (which I know is almost a cardinal sin to admit, but it just might be true) and not enough powder sugar.  It sweated quite a bit and was greasy.  The chips plus the evaporated milk made for a horrible chocolate drizzle over the top.  It was runny and ended up being just a thin, runny chocolate layer across the top that never really hardened up.  I could have made it thicker by adding more chocolate maybe, but I was tired and it was late.  Next time, I'm just melting the chocolate alone.  Which leads me to the last criticism.  What was up with the evaporated milk?  I hate wasting food and that is what it ended up being.  I opened up a can and used only a few tablespoons out of it.  There has to be a better way.

The brownie part was delicious.  The homemade brownie mix may just have to be made again.  It was the top half that I really struggled with.  It needs a better caramel recipe and a not so complicated chocolate drizzle recipe.  It's such a good idea with such an amazing brownie bottom, it's just not there yet.  And since Cooking Light apparently can't be bothered with trying and testing and perfecting their own recipes, I guess I'll just have to do it for them...  I'll keep you updated, the idea of salted caramel and fudgey brownie is just too yummy. 

Caramel Brownies

Adapted, and soon to be more so, from Cooking Light's September 2011 issue

Brownies:

3/4 c. all-purpose flour

1 c. granulated sugar

3/4 c. unsweetened cocoa

1/2 c. brown sugar

1/2 tsp. baking powder

6 Tbsp. butter, melted

2 large eggs, room temperature

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

Caramel Topping:

1/4 c. butter

1/4 c. brown sugar

1 1/2 Tbsp. evaporated milk

1/4 tsp. vanilla extract

2/3 c. powder sugar

1-2 Tbsp. semisweet chocolate chips, melted, for drizzling

Preheat oven to 350 degree F.  Lightly grease a 9x9 glass pan.

Combine flour, sugar, cocoa, brown sugar and baking powder in large bowl and whisk until well blended.  In smaller bowl, whisk together melted butter, eggs and vanilla.  Add slowly to dry mixture and stir until just combined, without over mixing.  Pour batter into prepared pan and move to preheated oven.  Bake 45-50 minutes, or until a toothpick  inserted in the center comes out with "moist crumbs clinging".  Don't over bake!  Place on wire rack to cool.

While brownies are cooling, prepare caramel.  Melt butte in saucepan over medium heat.  Whisk in brown sugar and evaporated milk.  Remove from heat and stir in vanilla and powdered sugar.  Continue to whisk until caramel is smooth.  Pour over cooled brownies and spread evenly.  Let cool until set, about 20 minutes.

Melt chocolate chips and stir until smooth.  Using small spoon, drizzle chocolate in neat patterns over brownies.  Let set, cut into squares and enjoy!