Irish Cream Cookies & Guinness Brownies

Bailey's Irish Cream Cookies

St. Pattys + Sarah and I together = Great excuse to bake with Baileys! The original recipe made 80 cookies! And, as much as I would like 80 cookies, it didn't seem prudent to make all of those for just the two of us... so we halfed this. The original was for 40 sandwich cookies made with a small clover cut out. We could only find a clover cutter made for giants. So we made single clovers and sandwich rounds.

Ingredients

- 2 sticks unsalted butter, room temp

-1&1/2 cups sugar

-1 egg

-1 egg yolk

-1 teaspoon vanilla extract

-4 cups AP flour

-1 tablespoon baking powder

-1/2 teaspoon salt

-1/2 cup Baileys

Directions:

1. Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add egg and egg yolk. Mix in vanilla extract. Alternate adding in dries with Baileys till combined.

2. Wrap cookie dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate a few hours to over night.

3. Roll out dough & cut out cookies using a shamrock cookie cutter. Chill cookies at least 30 minutes before baking to keep their shape.

4. Bake at 350 degrees for 12-13 minutes rotating once halfway through.  Start checking them after 10 minutes.  As soon as they get a little blonde on the edges, they're done. *This recipe yields about 80 shamrock cookies, 40 sandwich cookies.

Baileys Cream Filling

Ingredients:

- 2 sticks unsalted butter, room temp

- 2 & 1/2 cups powdered sugar

- 6T. Baileys

Directions:

1. Cream butter and sugar, adding a little sugar at a time so you don't have a sugar shower.

2. Add extract and Baileys.

3.Fill cooled cookies.

Guinness Brownies

Ingredients
1 cup flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
8 ounces dark bittersweet chocolate (chopped or measured chips)
3/4 cup white chocolate chips
4 large eggs, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups Guinness Extra Stout beer, room temperature, no foam
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 375. Grease 9x13 pan.
2. In medium bowl, whisk flour, cocoa powder and salt until evenly combined. Set aside.

3. In double boiler over low heat, melt butter, bittersweet chocolate and white chocolate chips. Stir constantly until melted. Remove from heat.

4. In large bowl, beat eggs and sugar on high speed until light and fluffy; about 3 minutes. Add spoonful of egg mixture to chocolate mixture to cool it off (you don't want to cook your eggs.) Add chocolate mixture to egg mixture and beat well.

5. Add flour mixture to egg mixture and beat until just combined. Whisk in beer. Pour in chocolate chips and stir to combine. Pour into prepared pan.

6. Bake 25 to 30 minutes (checking for doneness starting at 25 minutes). Brownies are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Let brownies cool to room temperature before cutting.