Truth be told, I have some sweet skills in the kitchen. Typically, I prefer cooking over baking. But every now and then, I do get the urge to throw something in the oven. Which can be very dangerous for all arteries involved.

Today is Christmas. And although I do not “really” celebrate the holiday, Christmas is a day of the year when I crave lots of fattening foods, candy and decadent desserts.

This afternoon, I got the urge to bake brownies. But not any old brownies. I got the craving for bacon brownies.

Naturally, I had to find some sort of way to incorporate beer into the recipe. So I started doing some research on the Internet.

Two of my greatest beer writing mentors, Lucy Saunders and Stephen Beaumont, have written amazing cookbooks with recipes that use beer as an ingredient.

For her book, The Best of American Beer & Food, Lucy Saunders created a fantastic recipe for Fudge Stout Brownies. Lucy’s recipe calls for coffee stout, bourbon, lots of chocolate and chopped nuts. Although I’m sure the recipe is easy to replicate, I did not have the required ingredients on hand. And being Christmas, all the grocery stores were closed.

I will put Lucy’s recipe on the back burner for now.

In his book, The beerbistro Cookbook, Stephen Beaumont highlights his own Stout Brownies recipe. As with Lucy’s recipe, I did not have access to all of the ingredients required for Stephen’s brownies.

I will put Stephen’s recipe on the back burner for now as well.

Lack of an “uncomplicated” recipe drove me to develop my own version of beer brownies using an over-the-counter box mix. Although I do not understand much about the “science” behind baking, I’ve been pretty successful at making substitutions for things without completely screwing up the end result.

I’m proud to say that today’s recipe was a success. I’m very excited to share “I’m very excited to share my artery clogging, heart attack inducing, catastrophic health insurance needing, easy-to-make beer brownie recipe with the world!

BEER WENCH BACON PEANUT BUTTER CUP BEER BROWNIES

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 box of brownie mix
• 3 eggs
• 1/3 cup chocolate, oatmeal or regular stout
• 1 package of bacon
• 6 whole peanut butter cups — chilled
• 2 tbsp butter

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease pan with butter. Yes, butter. Because butter makes everything better.
2. Cook entire package of bacon to desired consistency. I like a combination of crispy bacon and chewy bacon. The both add an interesting texture to the end product. Allow the bacon to cool and then dice it.
3. Chop the Peanut Butter Cups into small pieces.
4. Melt the butter and mix with the bacon. The recipe on the box technically calls for oil. Unfortunately, the only oil I had on hand was Olive Oil. So I decided that the oils from the bacon combined with melted butter would suffice for the recipe.
5. Combine the eggs, stout and bacon butter with the box brownie mix in a large bowl. Do not over mix. After all ingredients are combined, fold in the peanut butter cups.
6. Pour the mix into the greased pan and spread it evenly. Bake. For 13X9″ pan, bake 24-26 minutes. For 9×9″ pan, bake for 38-40 minutes. For 8×8″ pan, bake 52-54 minutes.
7. Serve with an Imperial Stout.

CHEERS!