Mocha Rum Brownies

On a recent trip to Nashville to reunite with some dear college friends, my old roommate and I were aimlessly browsing the aisles and shelves of a little shop in her adorable neighborhood near Vanderbilt University when she spotted a recipe book called Booze Cakes by Krystina Castella and Terry Lee Stone. Needless to say, we were immediately intrigued, and the book ended up coming home with us. Today's recipe is the first of what will certainly be many successful, tasty, and tipsy adaptations of recipes from Booze Cakes.

These Mocha Rum Brownies combine the depth of good espresso with spicy rum, and the next time I make them I might even add a pinch of cayenne pepper and/or cinnamon to the batter to introduce another element of warmth to the flavor combination. The frosting (which also called for rum...because when they say 'booze cakes', they really mean it) was probably my favorite part of the whole recipe. I've had rather inconsistent results with butter cream frostings in past projects, but the proportions here were perfect. I also added an extra tablespoon of rum to the frosting because I was feeling daring. The results weren't disappointing. 

Besides upping the alcohol content in the frosting, the only other adjustment this recipe got for my 4oz jars pertained to baking time. The original instructions called for 40-45 minutes in the oven, but 35 min. was plenty of time for my portions to be done (perhaps even too much?). Then again, I am a staunch proponent of the "gooier is better" camp when it comes to brownies, so my opinions here may be biased. 

Pre-baking ingredient assembly. Your eyes aren't deceiving you -- that is, indeed, a box of brownie mix. One of the perks of this recipe is that its execution is pretty fail-proof. The directions essentially say to "dump all ingredients into a bowl and stir", which is great for beginning chefs, young children (who should omit the rum component, obviously) and those in a hurry. 

I'm glad to have an excuse to use my Italian espresso maker. The recipe called for 1/4 c. of coffee, and this made almost the perfect amount. I happily finished off the left overs, and the caffeine boost propelled me through the rest of the afternoon.

My cookie sheet is pretty ugly. Please ignore that part of this picture. The jar-filling process took twice as long as the batter-mixing process for this recipe, which is a rare phenomenon. Also, if I really wanted these to be pretty, I would have wiped the edges of the jars more carefully after they were filled, but I knew the frosting was going to cover up my shameful drips, so I let 'em ride.

Mocha Rum Brownies all baked and cooling on their wire rack. My kitchen smelled pretty awesome at this point. While the brownies sat, I started on the frosting.

Frosting ingredient assembly. No cheating this time - we're making cocoa butter cream from scratch. Buckle up (or help yourself to some rum...)

Like I said, this frosting was very easy to work with. And delicious.

Mocha Rum Brownie with his topping applied and nicely swirled. There's just one thing missing...

Ah, the raspberry garnish makes all the difference. I think if I served these again I would add more than just one berry to each brownie. A nice trio might look appealing and deliver more flavor (but these matched the picture in the cookbook, so I stuck with just one this time around).

One last look at Mocha Rum Brownies cooling on the window sill. I hardly every have cut, fresh flowers in the house, so I felt the need to document my tulips in this photo too. And the succulent terrarium is another souvenir from my trip to Nashville, which seemed fitting.