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| Devils River Coffee Bourbon Brown Butter Blondies |
As a longtime member of the Austin Food Blogger Alliance (AFBA), we often have really cool events for our bloggers, although we've had to get more creative in recent months. Instead of meeting in person at a favorite watering hole, we had a virtual happy hour sponsored by Devils River Bourbon. So yes, this is a sponsored post. I was not compensated financially, only in caloric intake. All opinions are my own, as always.
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| Devils River Bourbon varieties |
Devils River Bourbon is based in San Antonio, and will soon be opening a new distillery/tasting room to the public. In the meantime, they sent us a lovely sampler box with 50 ml bottles of their different bourbons, and a new special coffee bourbon. Our happy hour was scheduled for the day the coffee bourbon was officially released to the public, so we were some of the first to try it! The actual Devils River is in South Texas and is pure, limestone-filtered water, which makes very smooth bourbon according to their website.
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| Devils River Coffee Bourbon two ways |
I am not a huge drinker, so I don't have a lot to go on, but this stuff is good! They use a San Antonio coffee roaster, and prepare the beans to a Vienna roast. They then make a cold brew from them and infuse with the bourbon; these are 80 proof. Their standard bourbon and rye whiskies are 80 proof, while the barrel select is 117 proof, not for the faint of heart!
For our call, I prepared the coffee bourbon two ways: on the rocks and with a little bit of cream, a la White Russian. Smelling and sipping on it straight, you do get the coffee and chocolately notes, and it was VERY tasty with the cream. If you visit their website, they have a wonderful variety of recipes for each of their different bourbons.
I decided to play around with the bourbon a little bit, and of course I like to bake! I found a recipe for browned butter bourbon blondies from Baker by Nature. Now I love blondies, and make them all the time using the standard Toll House recipe, but the idea of browned butter intrigued me! And why reinvent the wheel?
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| From golden hued to a roast caramel color, this is brown butter. |
When making browned butter (yes, you make it yourself! it's not something you buy), it's best to melt your butter over low to medium heat in a light colored pan so you can see the change in color. If you use a cast iron or dark teflon pan, you won't readily know when the butter is sufficiently browned. Burned butter is bad butter!
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I like to use chocolate bars (these were a 70%, so a milder bittersweet) and just rough chop them, but chocolate chips are fine! I followed the recipe pretty much to the letter, and I think the result is fantastic! Sprinkling some flaky sea salt on them after baking is optional, but I like the flavor and touch of crunch the salt adds. Make sure it's a FLAKY SALT, not just regular granular sea salt. Maldon is a French one that's extremely well known, and here I have used Murray River Sea Salt from Australia. Many grocery stores that have spices in their bulk foods section often have a nice selection of sea salts, so you can just buy a couple tablespoons. These are what's known as finishing salts, as they are more expensive and delicate than table or kosher salt, but also have much more flavor to them.
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The browned butter flavor on these is wonderful! I might use a tad more bourbon next time, as the taste in these is subtle but overall, I am extremely happy with them. And won't get drunk off them! 😉
Have you had a coffee bourbon before? How do you drink it? Ever made a dish with it? Do tell!