October 22, 2010 - 7:34pm
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
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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
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.
Thanks Mini. I think I will try the drizzling method.
Paul