Even Treats Grow Up Sometimes

 

So my friend Kim, (the fiancee of my dear friend Dean, whom I have mentioned before) finally turned 21 last month! We were all very excited about it, and of course I just had to make something special for her.

It took me quite a while to come up with a great gift. I thought up, and shot down a few ideas before coming up with something I liked, but I don’t think I wavered once on this treat.

You see, Kim is a chocoholic like me. Which makes it easy to come up with ideas, and to top it off when she and Dean came to my place for a season finale party, she couldn’t resist the brownies I had made. Granted, being such a good friend I kept moving the plate right in front of her, but still, they seemed to make her really happy so I was already leaning that way when I saw a recipe on Culinary Concoctions by Peabody for liqueured brownies!

Yes, my dear friends, brownies, like the hot chocolate I made last month, have finally grown up 🙂

Because I really like the brownie recipe I made back in February, I decided just to take the concept from Peabody and use my own recipes. I’ve used that same brownie recipe here, added a little liqueur (okay, a lot of liqueur) and instead of her buttercream frosting I used a powdered sugar glaze. With liqueur instead of water, of course 🙂

Can you imagine anything better than these after a long hard day? You get tons of rich fudgy chocolate AND just enough alchohol to make the stresses of the day melt away.

Boozy Brownies

source: CookingClub.com

1 cup butter, melted
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 bag dark chocolate chips
1/3 cup creme de cacao

Glaze
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon creme de cacao

1. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease 8-inch square pan. In large bowl, whisk together melted butter, sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla. Whisk in eggs until well-combined.

2. In medium bowl, stir together flour, cocoa, baking powder and 3/4 teaspoon salt. Gradually stir flour mixture into egg mixture until well-combined. Stir in chocolate chips then spread in pan.

3. Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean but with some crumbs attached (brownies may sink in center). While brownies are still hot, generously brush liqueur over the top then allow to completely on wire rack.

4. Once cool, cut brownies, place them on wire rack with a little space between them. Mix the ingredients for the glaze, adding a little more liqueur if needed. Pour into a zip lock bag, cut off the tip and drizzle over brownies.

As you can probably tell, adding so much liqueur after they were baked made them a little gooey, almost like they were underbaked (even though they weren’t!) If you try it yourself, you might want to overbaked them a little. Then again, gooey chocolaty, boozy brownies are always good.

I am really happy with how these things turned out. They are rather potent, so make sure little hands don’t stray to the wrong plate, but they really are great.

Update: I sent some of these home with Kim, and brought some into work. Dean dove into the home ones immediately and loved them, and at work they were gone almost instantly, so this is definitely a winner 🙂