Chocolate Maple Beer Bread

St. Patrick’s Day was yesterday, a day of copious drinking and revelry, but here at the LVB, we don’t use beer for drinking; that’s just silly. Beer is for baking! 🙂

My little brother, the expert on all things beer, and knowing I like the stout, got me this bottle of Speedway Racer about 6 months ago. I finally decided to open it (with ideas for sweet creations swirling in my brain) and holy cow was it good. Super intense, chocolate-y, and rich. I had seen a recipe for a white honey beer bread that was super easy, but wanting to highlight the stout’s natural essence, I tweaked it a bunch and came up with this.  9 ingredients and in the oven in less than 10 minutes!!

It tastes like beer. A lot. It is not a chocolate bread with a hint of hops, but a beer bread with a chocolate undertone. You can use whatever beer you’d like in this recipe, stouts in particular would be perfect, but really any beer that goes well with chocolate could be used. Just make sure you pick one you like; you will taste it!  The maple adds a bit of sweetness, but this is by no means a sweet bread.  It would go best with a thick stew or soup or just on its own with some butter, or coconut cream like I did.  Although I will say, I had it for breakfast one day and felt like I was starting off my morning with a pint. Woohoo.

Chocolate Maple Beer Bread

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder, measured, then sifted
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 12 oz beer of your choice
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup melted vegan butter

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder,  cocoa powder and salt.
3. Add the maple syrup, beer, and water and stir until just combined.
4. Pour half of the melted butter into a loaf pan.  Scrape batter in next, then pour the remaining melted butter on top of the batter.
5. Bake for 50-60 minutes until done.
6. Let cool 5 minutes before removing from pan and let cool completely on a wire rack.