By Greg B. I was very fortunate to head to Morton’s for a charity/organic wine dinner a few weeks ago.  And I was absolutely awe struck by the dessert I had.  It was rich and chocolatey and delicious in every regard.  The wines that were paired with it went alright, but I knew, in my heart of hearts, that beer would do a better job.  So I set out to see if this was possible (and, I needed an excuse to make some of this cake again!)

Fortunately, the internet is a great help.  I found a recipe on recipezaar that did the trick. even if this isn’t the exact recipe, it’s really close (or, tasted really close!).

• 1.5 cups unsalted butter
• granulated sugar
• 12oz bittersweet chocolate
• 8 large egg yolks
• 7 large eggs
• 1.5 cups confectioner’s sugar
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• fresh raspberries
• vanilla ice cream

Luckily for me, somewhere in the middle of making dinner, my garbage disposal unit got clogged.  So while I was busy cleaning that, Gabi drew the lucky straw of baking!  Essentially (the link above has all the steps listed out and clearly written, I’ll just sum it up), you’re going to melt the chocolate, combine the other ingredients, beat the heck out of it (electric mixers is important here), then bake in souffle cups.  In my case, we don’t normally have souffle cups, so we used cupcake tins, just watch it and shorten the cook time by a little bit.  These came out amazing, especially right from the oven, where the centers were chewy and dense, chocolate flavors were delicious yet the cake itself was rather light to eat.  it was a delicious dessert, I encourage you to try it!

But the real magic happened with the beer.  I went to my basement, and thought I still had a Founder’s Imperial stout, but I didn’t.  So, I reached into the back of my cellar and pulled out a bottle of SSS, from Brouwerij de Molen.  So far, all their beers have been fantastic, and this beer I was hoping would be no different.  It had the same simple yet classy and elegant label as the Rasputin and the Hel & Verdomenis, proclaiming that this was bottle #32/696 bottles.  With a starting gravity of 1094, ending gravity of 1020, brewed Jan 17th of 2008 and bottled Feb 21st 2008… then opened June 2nd, 2009!  194.7 EBC, 84.5 EBU and the label says the bottle will keep for up to 5 years in a cellar.

I poured the beer into the pilsener spiegelau glassware I had, because I felt it would be the best glass to show off the wonderful nose of this beer.  The beer pours a deep brown color in the pour, but has a very opaque black in the glass.  There is a tan pillowy head that recedes at a fairly normal pace, but as it leaves it expresses wonderful aromas of toffee, chocolate and an almost milk chocolate but more of a darker milk chocolate yet not quite dark dark chocolate aroma.  It’s amazingly enticing!  There is fruit on the nose as well, no doubt provided by our friendly friends, the ale yeast.  But the dark malts really take center stage on this one.  To taste… the beer has such balance yet it’s so powerfully amazing.  It hits you just like it smells, with a toffee/coffee flavor and a milk chocolate that is a bit dry and darker than usual so as to be almost a dark chocolate but not quite.  The beer commands such a strong presence in the mouth it’s almost like a coffee/chocolate milkshake, though far superior.  There are some sweeter malts that come through at the end, though they are balanced by a great amount of roasted malt.  To start, it also has this wonderful nutty aroma that you get after you swallow and sample the beer, and the flavor stays with you for minutes afterwards.  It’s a superb drink.  if you find a bottle, buy one.  But make sure to tell me where you saw it, and to save one for me!  4.5/5, 9.99% abv

Ok, so after sampling this beer, I knew we had the right one for the dessert.  The dark roasted malts in the beer would match perfectly to the bittersweet chocolate for the dessert.  The raspberries in the dessert would match perfectly with the slightly fruity aromas of the beer.  And the sweeter residual sugars would make it all go down in one happy delicious mouthful, though the carbonation of the beer would refresh between bites.  And that’s exactly what happened.  The beer even went amazingly well with the vanilla ice cream, which accentuated the nutty/chocolate flavors of the beer and the vanilla bean of the ice cream!

Ok, so you don’t have to get as fancy a beer to pair with your dessert, but I got lucky with this bottle.  It was the perfect match, though almost any imperial stout will do. Old Rasputin?  check.  Old Heathen?  Check.  Peg Leg stout?  check.  You see my drift I’m sure.  These beers contain the perfect elements to make them match so many desserts, be enjoyable on their own, or to raise up the level of your dessert from a fun night with friends to a symphony of awesome.  All from a beer.