Mocha Brownie with Caramel Sauce — Culinary Seasons

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This recipe is a spin on the Decadent Brownies recipe. Instead of going out and buying an instant espresso try this method to infuse the brownie with coffee flavor. Any roast of coffee will work for this recipe.

I wanted to feature Northbound Coffee Roasters in this recipe. Using coffee grounds instead of an instant coffee or espresso as other recipes leads to a few issues in baking. The first being, if you use strong brewed coffee or espresso shots to get the coffee flavor you will be adding additional liquid to the brownie batter. This can cause issue with making a brownie that can stand up to the additional moisture.

Second, you could add find ground coffee to the brownie mix, may sound like a good idea but probably not. Even though chocolate covered espresso beans are a thing, coffee grounds in the brownie may give a gritty texture when eating.

Infusing Butter

Just like the recipe I wrote for Mystic Valley Farm- Peppermint and Elderberry Infused Tea Cookies, imparting the flavor of the tea into the cookie took a few attempts to get it right. Trying different ways to get the coffee flavor into the brownies took a couple of tries.

My first attempt was to adjust the ingredients to add strong brewed coffee to the batter. This baked up fine but as I said previously, the additional liquid threw off the other ingredients and the result was drier brownie than I wanted.

I had one of those moments one day where it just hit me. “Duh, infuse the butter”, I gave it a try. Infusing the butter with coffee grounds was the answer.

Melting the butter with the coffee grounds and letting it steep for up to an hour worked great.

Then proceeding with making the brownies as normal would result in a final product that is rich chocolate with a nice coffee finish. Plus, coffee helps boost the chocolate flavor!

Enjoy these Mocha Brownies with Caramel Sauce and some coffee ice cream!