Guinness Beer Bread with Scallion Cream Cheese

One of my favorite St. Patty's Day treats is the Guinness Chocolate Cake I make. A number of people in my office this year gave up sweets for Lent, so I had to come up with something else to treat them. Back in college, my old roommate showed me how to make beer bread for the first time and it was this crusty, hoppy delicious bread. How perfect! To keep up with the Irish theme, I opted to use Guinness for my beer and include some Cheddar. The one thing that was missing was the green... Ah ha! A spread.... I am thinking....Cream Cheese with scallions! Overall, a perfect breakfast treat for my office, and a perfect treat for your St. Patty's Day celebrations!

This bread is so simple. Essentially, you have 3 steps. Dry ingredients. Add Guinness. Add cheese. That's it. Well, and baking it... but I guess that is a given.

*Guinness can be an intense beer, so I looked up a recipe to make sure I was not over doing the flavor. The first time I made beer bread, it was with a Bud Light. My recipe is an adaptation of The Kitchn's Cheddar and Chive Guinness Bread.*

Bread
4 1/8 cups flour
6 tbs granulated sugar
1 1/2 tbs baking powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
18 ounces Guinness
1 cup grated Irish Cheddar Cheese
1/4 cup melted butter

Spread
2, 8oz packages cream cheese
5-7 stalks green onion


Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. I am using a mixer, but this is easy enough to do by hand. First, place your flour in a bowl. Add the sugar, baking powder, and salt to the flour and mix well to incorporate all the dry ingredients.

The next step is to just add the Guinness. I had 14 ounce cans, so I added a whole can and then a little extra to get to the full 18 ounces of beer needed.

You should immediately start to see your dough forming.

Grate a cup of Irish Cheddar cheese. Add about 3/4 of it to the bread dough.

The cheese won't be prominent in the final product, ie... you won't really see it. But what it does is add another dimension of flavor, and balance out the Guinness. Once the dough is completed, place inside a well buttered loaf pan, about 9 x 4.5in.

My favorite part about beer bread... is that you top it with butter. MELTED BUTTER! Yum. It gives it this insane buttery top crust that just completely compliments the dense hoppy inside of the bread. Your next step is to melt 1/4 cup of butter and pour it over the top of the bread.

Once you have successfully covered your loaf in butter, stick it in the oven and bake for 30 minutes.

When 30 minutes has gone by, remove the bread and place the rest of the cheese on top of it. I kind of like to place it in a nice thick line down the middle. Put it back in the oven and bake for another 20 minutes.

When the 20 minutes is up, your bread is done! Pull it out of the baking pan and set it on a rack to cool. The outer crust should give you the ability to pull the bread out of the pan without breaking it apart.

Now on to the cream cheese. This is super simple. First, you need to clean and chop your stalks of green onions. Cut them into little uniform rounds. Remember to cut off the hairy looking ends of the onions, using only the rest of the white part and greens all the way up until about an inch from the end.

Next, take the cream cheese and place it in a bowl. Add the scallions and thoroughly mix them together.

Place it in a pretty bowl and serve it next to your bread.

What I usually do is cut off slices of the bread, toast it, and then add the cream cheese.... YUM!!

mmmmmmmm looks like someone got to my bread before I did ;)