Valentine’s Day is around the corner and whether love is in the air or not, you can always make time for some chocolate and turn up. A long time ago my best friend and I discovered the magic of chocolate, cognac and whiskey… together. Yes, together! Now before you scoff and call me an alchie, understand that chocolate was made to be paired with many things… dark alcohol being one of them. My goal is to never steer you wrong so please trust me when I tell you that adding a little bit of mischief to your brownie batter will have you doing a shimmy… or two. Furthermore, why stop at the brownies when you can also make your strawberries drunk?
For this year’s Valentine’s Day recipe special, I decided to create a sweet treat that has a hint of turn up. However, if you don’t drink, feel free to omit the alcohol altogether. My brownie recipe alone is rich and decadent satisfying all chocolate lovers. As with many of my recipes, feel free to add your twists and remixes. For example, I like to use bitter sweet chocolate because dark chocolate is my jam but if you like a sweet chocolate, rest assured that milk chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate will work just as fine.
I’ve been making brownies FOREVER so why not spruce it up a bit for Valentine’s Day? The best part is that if you want to skip the baking altogether you can just make the drunken strawberries and the chocolate sauce. The two together are amazing and can even get you into a little trouble. Whether it’s good or bad trouble is for you to decide. *wink. I’m not going to lie, I’ve been guilty of making the drunken strawberries and chocolate sauce and forgetting the brownies (oops). In the end, I have the full recipe here for you so feel free to alter as you like.
Quick Tips:
The cardinal rule of baking is that dry ingredients are mixed together in one batch and the wet ingredients together in another. At the very end, you add the two together. This tip will save you time and time again. Another tip I live by is lining my baking sheets with parchment paper instead of butter or oil. This will make baking 100x times easier and it expands the lifeline of my baking pans.
Ingredients
- • ¾ cups of flour
- • 1/3 cup cocoa powder
- • 2 eggs
- • 1 stick of butter (room temperature if possible)
- • 1 ½ cup of bitter sweet chocolate or chocolate of your choice
- • ½ cup of sugar (for brownies)
- • 1tbs of sugar (for strawberries)
- • ½ cups of sweet condensed milk
- • *3tbs- ½ cup of hazelnut liqueur
- • *2-5tbs of chocolate liqueur
- • ½ cup of white moscato
- • 1 pinch of salt
- • 8x8 baking pan
Instructions
1. Preheat oven at 350 degrees
2. **Set up a double boiler and melt butter
3. Making sure that the water in your saucepan doesn’t touch your bowl, add the chocolate chips
4. Mix the chocolate chips slowly as they begin to melt until its one nice smooth consistency
5. Once it’s warm, place on the table and add alcohol—feel free to add as much or as little as you like. I was fairly conservative on camera. Pero yo le echo sin miedo! (I add without being fearful)
6. Set chocolate sauce to the side
7. Mix flour, salt, and cocoa powder in one bowl
8. Mix sugar and eggs in another bowl
9. Add sweet condensed milk to chocolate sauce and mix
10. Mix in eggs and sugar into chocolate sauce
11. Now add the flour, cocoa powder, salt mixture… careful not to make a mess
12. Mix together until batter is nice and thick
13. Add brownie batter to your 8x8 baking pan making sure to spread the batter out evenly
14. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes. The longer you bake your brownies the more cake-like and dry they will be. I like to bake mine for 25 minutes since I love a chewy, fudgy brownie
15. Once they’re done, remove from oven and let cool for about 5-10 minutes and then cut into squares
Drunken Strawberries
1. Cut strawberries into 3 pieces and set into a bowl
2. Add ½ cup of moscato
3. Add ½ cup of sugar
4. Stir until all of the ingredients are combined
5. Let sit in the refrigerator while brownies bake.
Notes
*Alcohol in this recipe can be altered to taste or omitted
Extra Chocolate Sauce
If you’re like me then you know that we can always make our brownies a little bit tipsier. If not, feel free to skip this step. To make extra chocolate sauce I used ¼ cup of bitter sweet chocolate chips and melted them like before. I then added 2tbs of chocolate liqueur and 3tbs of the hazelnut liqueur. This sauce packs a nice punch. Feel free to alter to your taste or skip altogether.
Once your brownies are done serve yourself a healthy portion of this decadent yet mischievous desert. I love pairing it with some coconut ice cream and drizzling the chocolate over everything. My favorite part is eating the leftover drunken strawberries.
I hope you guys have enjoyed this fun take on a Valentine’s Day favorite. I’m currently eating the of the drunken strawberries as I write this post. Cheers!… or actually… Buen provecho!
Click here to watch the video on How to Make Tipsy Brownies with Drunken Strawberries
*Alcohol in this recipe can be altered to taste or omitted
**Double boiler is when you warm water in a sauce pan and then put a boil on top of it careful that the bowl and doesn’t touch the water being boiled. The heat from the water will slowly warm up and melt the butter and the chocolate.