BetterBeerBlog

The topic for this month’s Session is Beer Desserts hosted by David at Beer 47. When I first heard about this month’s topic I was pretty excited. Having done a couple of Beer & Dessert Pairings in the past, I was eager to share my experiences. It wasn’t until late last night though that I re-read the topic and realized that I actually had to cook a beer-based dessert. Crap. Pairing is one thing, cooking is quite another. I’m not a bad cook but I’m not superexceptionalawesome either.

The dessert I will be making is a fudge brownie baked with Old Rasputin XII Russian Imperial Stout, served with a spoonful of sorbet made from Lindemans Framboise. and drizzled from caramel made from Celebrator Doppelbock.

Caramel

To make the caramel for this dish, I’m going to boil the crap out of the doppelbock until it’s a caramel-like consistency. I ended up using about 75% of a 12oz bottle and I’m boiling it on medium-high heat. I don’t think I’ve had Celebrator before. It’s good. Rich, malty aroma, toasted bread notes with a sweet malt flavor that has a lot of savory, melanoidic qualities, toasted bread and hints of caramel. Love that decoction method of brewing!

Not sure if the caramel scorched or not but the beer flavors are greatly concentrated. I think there’s only enough “caramel” to use as a garnish in the plating. Oh well, we’ll see how it looks.

Brownies

I admit it, I used a brownie mix. I’m sure it’s not that hard to make brownies from scratch but these mix things aren’t half bad. The “recipe” calls for 2 tablespoons of water. I substituted Old Rasputin XII Russian Imperial Stout instead and doubled the amount to a whopping 4 tablespoons. Uh-huh. I am a rebel.

Sorbet

We borrowed our friend’s ice cream maker for this. The ice cream maker came with directions on how to make a sorbet that we ignored completely. Instead, we put 3 cups of the Lindemans Framboise right into the ice cream maker. We let this bad boy run for about 30 minutes. Upon completion, we put the sorbet into the freezer for about an hour to firm up. Technology rewlz!

The Dessert

The final dessert was a cube of the stout brownie and a scoop of the framboise sorbet. The caramel didn’t work out to well so we just omitted it. You really couldn’t taste the beer in brownie though. The sorbet was a little bit more tart than I thought it would be. The combination was pretty good, the sweetness contrasted against the tartness, the warm, fudge-like texture of the brownies contrasted against the cold, slushy sorbet.

If I could do this dessert over, I’d have made the caramel better, I’d have let the sorbet set a little longer as well as added a little bit of sugar to the framboise before it turned into sorbet.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 8th, 2009 at 2:08 am and is filed under Beer and Food Pairings, The Session. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.