Beer Brownies

Beer Brownies - made May 26, 2014 from Texans United

It's June. Why is it June already???  2014 just started a few weeks ago; I'm sure of it. But suddenly it's June. Oy.

Remember my clueless adventure in buying beer for the French Dip recipe? I neglected to mention that I had to buy a 6-pack since they didn't sell single bottles (darn). So now I have 5 bottles of Heineken to get rid of. Well, make that 4 bottles now since I did use up one for this recipe. You gotta love pinterest because I just did a search of Beer Brownies and this one popped up immediately. It looked so moist and fudgy that I had to try it.

What's intriguing about this recipe is you melt the chocolate chips into the batter, including the white chocolate chips. I'm not sure of the purpose of that because there's absolutely no taste of white chocolate in these but I'm a good baking sheeple and followed the directions faithfully. The beer is added last and right before I added it, the batter smelled so good, very divinely chocolaty. Then I added the beer and cringed. It smelled beer-y and I wondered if I had just ruined a good batch of brownies. But I was banking on the alcohol burning off in baking so I trusted the recipe and went with it. Not to mention it was too late to do anything else anyway.

These actually turned out pretty well. I loved the texture because it was as moist and fudgy as any good brownie should be. I assume that was helped by the beer. I did taste the beer slightly but it was very muted and possibly also because I knew it was in there. If I hadn't known, I might not have given it a second thought. If you don't like the taste of beer, use a very dark cocoa like Pernigotti (Hershey's won't cut it) as well as dark chocolate for the bittersweet and semisweet. If you do like the taste of beer, use a dark beer and more of a mild cocoa. I was happy enough to taste very little beer in the brownie.

1 cup flour
3/4 cup cocoa
1/4 teaspoon salt
7 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate
4 ounces semisweet chocolate
3/4 cup white chocolate chips
4 eggs, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups beer at room temperature, no foam
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Line a 9 x 13" pan with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray.
3. In a medium bowl, stir together flour, cocoa and salt until combined.
4. In a double boiler over low heat, melt butter, bittersweet and semisweet chocolates and white chocolate chips, stirring frequently until completely melted and smooth.
5. In a large mixing bowl, beat eggs and sugar on high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Temper the egg mixture with a little of the chocolate mixture and stir to combine. Then pour all of the chocolate mixture into the egg mixture and beat until combined.
6. Add the flour mixture slowly into the egg-chocolate mixture and stir until just combined. Fold in the beer, followed by the semisweet chocolate chips and mix until combined.
7. Pour into prepared pan and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and let cool completely before slicing and serving.