Friday, September 21, 2012

Of Baked Goods and Beer

Some of you know that I have a little obsession with craft beer. Fortunately for that, the past 2 weeks have been a whirlwind of beer enjoyment and experimentation, with some baked goods on the side!

First up was my favorite BeerAdvocate event, the Belgian Beer Fest's Night of the Funk ! This event showcases extreme Belgian beers, with plenty of sour, funky, creatively flavored, and higher-ABV brews to try. Two-ounce pours ensure you can try a huge variety, and you walk away with improved knowledge of the various styles as well as a significantly longer cellar wish list! I won't go into my favorites here - let's just say that my in-media-Fest tasting notes are not as coherent as this blog - but I will share a stellar food item that helped us power through the night. Meet the Waffle Cabin's Belgian waffle.
Blurriness aside, you can get a sense of the waffle's heft, as well as a glimmer of the sweet glaze that coated it. The waffle itself is a dense, chewy masterpiece, with a pleasant vanilla taste. It's coated in a sticky, sugary glaze that must be freshly made - there's a graininess to it, as if all the sugar used to make it hasn't fully dissolved. (That occasional sweet crunch is so good!) You can really sink your teeth into this treat, and, strictly speaking, it doesn't need tinkering to be satisfying. But I'm me, and Taza Chocolate was also on hand - so, Chocolate had to meet Waffle. It was a happy coincidence that Taza's Fest samples were cut to fit perfectly in the waffle's grooves. The chocolate softened from the waffle's warmth and melted into each little reservoir. The samples were from Taza's aggressive Mexicano line; imagine high percents cacao, sans sweeteners, with a pronounced grainy texture owing to their stone-ground process. Flavors included cinnamon, chipotle, ginger, orange, and salted almond. I grabbed a square of each flavor for the waffle above. Let's hope I have an opportunity to do a more thorough review of Taza at some point; until then, suffice it to say that these items, combined, made for the best possible Fest food! Oh, along with Corey's pretzel necklaces, gummy worms, and...pepperoni.

The fun did not end that night. You may recall a blurb on post-ACBF fun at the Bocoup Loft; we all met up there again for a bit of post-BBF/NotF fun the next week. Corey and Greg brought the beers, I brought the cookies. I've blogged about my Valrhona triple-chocolate cookies previously, so I won't repeat what I've already said. Just know that this third batch of them was the best yet, in terms of both personal satisfaction with the outcome and their rate of disappearance. (The entire batch lasted maybe an hour, max?) However, let's go over a few of the cookie/beer pairings. First up, we have the Alchemist Brewery's famous Heady Topper! It's been vying with Russian River's Plinys (both Elder and Younger) for the best beer on BeerAdvocate's ratings, and that clout has made it difficult to procure. We got lucky with a Vermonter in our midst. This double IPA has multilayered grassy notes and a long-lingering aftertaste. It's surprisingly light on the tongue for a double.
Next is a collaboration between Sierra Nevada and Russian River, the beloved Santa Rosa (CA) brewery whose groundbreaking IPAs and sours are sadly not distributed on the East Coast. I guess it took Sierra Nevada's partnership to get Brux, a wild ale, out to us. This ale smells rather fresh and is vibrantly carbonated, with only a hint of sourness. I would have expected more from a brewery with an impeccable track record in sours, but that's not to say I wouldn't drink it again. Also, it looks like someone has nibbled a cookie...
Later brews included Jolly Pumpkin's Bam Biere and Hill Farmstead Brewery's Arthur (both saisons), plus nightcaps of New England Brewing's 668 (a Belgian strong pale ale) and Elm City Pilsner. All in all, a great night!

But wait - there's more. Non-cookie foods were obtained outside the Loft. After a series of appetizers at Lucky's (and my first Pumpkinhead of the season - I guess it really is fall!), we stopped by Sportello's bakery counter. Sportello makes incredibly good, unique cupcakes. Here are our strawberry cheesecake cupcakes, readied for travel in upside-down cups. That travel config was fortunate, since I took my cupcake home and ate it the following day.
Sportello "translates" cheesecake to cupcake in an interesting way. We have a graham cracker cake in place of crust, cream cheese frosting in place of actual cheesecake, and strawberry filling plus freeze-dried strawberry garnish in place of fruit topping. Here is the partially-consumed treat; look at that filling and the texture of the cake and frosting!
The graham cracker base was really unique. Store-bought graham crackers are more like sawdust than cake, and their taste is forgettable. This cake, full of brown sugar and cinnamon and butter, was moist and dense and flavorful. The strawberry filling, with fruit pieces and jam, added additional moisture and flavor. The cream cheese frosting was simply perfect! It was sweet and slightly tangy, with a dense, smooth, and even texture. If real cheesecake were anything like this frosting, I would be eating it all the time.

Alas, after the beerdulgence (that's beer indulgence) the night before, I did not wash this cupcake down with yet another brew. Even I have my limits!

So, which beer / baked good combination will be next? I'll take requests.

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