Guinness Brownies

I asked readers about St. Patrick’s Day dessert recipe requests recently. The outpouring of “anything with Guinness” convinced me to pick up a 6 pack and begin recipe testing. My kitchen smelled like a brewery at 9am on a Tuesday morning, but the result was well worth my boozy wake up call.

Before you run away at the thought of beer brownies, let me explain. These Guinness brownies do NOT taste like beer. Guinness stout, with its roast coffee and caramelized flavors, is often paired with chocolate in baking. They’re a natural duo because Guinness not only intensifies chocolate, but adds a malty background.

A quick internet search for “Guinness brownies” will spew out a million results. Even still, I wanted to try my hand at this popular dessert because even though brownies seem pretty basic, it’s difficult to maintain a desirable texture when you begin adding all sorts of stuff. And I was ready for the challenge.

Video Tutorial: How To Make Guinness Brownies

Let’s Talk Flavor + Texture

Dark chocolate comes to mind first. These Guinness brownies aren’t overly sweet, so you’ll find yourself grabbing another. (If it’s not the brownies that are addicting, it’s the frosting. More on that below!) If we’re talking texture, they’re very dense and very moist. In fact, they’re the moistest brownies I’ve ever baked… because they’re the only brownies I’ve ever baked with Guinness! Unlike my chewy fudgy frosted brownies, these Guinness brownies are not particularly chewy. They taste like fudge. A square of dark chocolate fudge.

How It Works

To impart enough flavor into the brownies, we’d have to use a lot of beer. But adding liquid to brownies makes absolutely no sense. So let’s take what we learned from homemade strawberry cake and reduce the beer down on the stovetop first. The heat evaporates the liquid, but leaves the flavor. Little liquid, lots of flavor, won’t turn our brownies into cake. We also do this with champagne in mimosa cupcakes. And I do the same thing with my Guinness chocolate cupcakes and Guinness chocolate cake, too!

This step is really easy and requires zero effort from you. Pour an entire 12 oz bottle of Guinness into a saucepan. (The whole bottle! Nothing to waste!) Leave it alone to simmer for 20ish minutes, until it’s reduced down to 2/3 cup. This is less than half the liquid we started with, but triple the flavor.

We’ll use 1/2 cup of reduced Guinness in the brownie batter and the remaining 2 and 1/2 Tablespoons in the frosting.

The rest of the brownie ingredients are usual suspects. Butter, sugar, eggs, flour. Instead of cocoa powder, we’re using pure solid chocolate. Sometimes I use a combination of pure chocolate AND cocoa powder in homemade brownies, but I wanted to keep things really simple since we’re taking extra time to reduce beer on the stove.

Besides Guinness, you know what else intensifies chocolate’s flavor? Coffee. I add espresso powder to both the brownie batter and frosting on top. It’s optional, but if you really want a deep dark chocolate brownie, don’t leave the espresso powder out.

Guinness Frosting

The brownies are great alone, but better with this frosting. Their decadent nature screams for something creamy! (That being said, eat one with a pint of Guinness in the other hand.)

This caramel colored frosting is an interesting flavor. Interesting in a good way! It’s mostly espresso flavored, though there are lingering notes of maple too. Not sure how it tastes like maple, but I suspect it’s the combination of reduced Guinness, vanilla, and confectioners’ sugar. Whatever the reason, it’s SO GOOD because it’s SO DIFFERENT.

Other St. Patrick’s Day Recipes

• Mint Chocolate Brownies
• Guinness Brownies
• Lucky Charms Treats
• Baileys and Coffee Cupcakes
• Irish Soda Bread
• Mint Chocolate Swirl Bark
• St. Patrick’s Day Cookies

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