Citrusly Hopped Brownie

At the end of last year, I had decided to set myself a goal that would last the entirety of the next year and would be something I enjoy. Thanks to my little brother and a conversation we had while camping, I decided to do a brownie blog. Shocking, I know. My aim was to create different brownies based on flavors I enjoy and had not seen or had in a brownie. One early idea was to make a brownie based on my favorite beer, IPA's. After a lot of conversations and a very little amount of research, I purchased some Citra hops and began. 

With this particular brownie, I received a lot of negative feedback from people I mentioned it to. As much as we strive to not let the negativity hinder us, it always does. Negativity has killed ideas before they even had a chance to be genius. It has pushed and kept down dreams from every being realized. It will dig a hole and leave you wondering why you feel as though you are stuck in a rut. Bad days are annoying and bad ideas are just that, bad ideas. However, the negative air that seems to follow these bad days and ideas can make it impossible for it them to ever turn into good days or be transformed into amazing ideas. 

Now, for the brownie. I tried a few ways to extract the hop flavor. First was steeping the hops like tea. This seemed to bring out the bitterness more that anything else. Next I went to vodka (in hindsight I think Everclear might do the job better). I placed 1 cup of raw hops in a jar, just covered the hops with vodka and let it sit for 3 days. The first batch I used 4 tbls and felt I wasn't getting the hopped flavor I was hoping for. So the next batch I reduced the hopped vodka down and used 4 tbls. The following recipe is what I ended with and it is pretty good. Although in the end, I think if you can find Hop Oil from your friendly brewery supply shops, that would work better with a little less effort on your part. 

Brownies

1 cup of chocolate
1 cup of butter
4 eggs
1 cup of caster sugar
½ tsp of salt
5 tbls of hop flavor
2 tsp of orange extract

½ cup of flour

- Heat oven to 350^o­ F 
- Melt chocolate and butter together
- Whisk eggs, sugar, salt
- Add chocolate, hop flavor and orange extract to eggs and sugar
- Sift flour and stir until mix is thicker but still wet
- Pour batter into brownie pan (9 x 13 in) 
- Bake for a total of 35-40 minutes (until skewer/cake tester comes out clean)

PJ