The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Alcohol as a flavor enhancer

Mustang 51's picture
Mustang 51

Alcohol as a flavor enhancer

I have been thinking about adding some bourbon to brownies to see how the taste compares to bourbon balls. It is a common practice to replace a like amount of a liquid in a recipe when adding a liquid. Alcohol evaporates faster than water. Does anyone here have experience doing something like this? Will it just dry out the brownies? Should I try something other than a one to one ratio? Any help is appreciated. I hate wasting food.

Thanks,

Paul 

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

in the recipe with the bourbon or concentrated baking flavoring.  My brownie recipe doesn't contain water.   Another trick would be to drizzle a shot glass of bourbon over the finished baked brownies and let it soak in.  A trick with many a holiday fruit cake. 

Mini

Chuck's picture
Chuck

My (very limited) experience agrees. Alcohol seems to entirely evaporate at baking temperatures. You can spend a lot on some very flavorful alcohol but end up with very little if you try to bake it in. (Sometimes folks put a bottle of some very flavorful craft beer in bread dough though:-) If you want flavor, usually some kind of solid (ex: lemon zest) or extract (ex: maple flavoring) is more likely -- if you want to actually taste the bite of alcohol and/or risk getting a little tipsy, you'll probably need to figure out some way to add it after baking. Some kind of drizzling or soaking -or putting it in the frosting- seems more likely to work.

Mustang 51's picture
Mustang 51

Thanks Mini. I think I will try the drizzling method.

Paul