After that incredible Bún Thịt Nướng, I’m still very much in the mood for Vietnamese food! I went searching through my Pinterest boards thinking a dessert would be the thing to try and fell in love with this recipe for Vietnamese Coffee Midnight Brownies. You have to understand that I was already in a steady relationship with Vietnamese Iced Coffee (Cafe Sua Da). It’s the most incredible coffee drink I have ever tried, and I drink it often. I also have a side thing going on with dark chocolate LOL Finding a recipe that combines the two? Love at first sight and a must-try!
These brownies stems from my love of Vietnamese coffee and a serious lack of sleep.
The Ingredients
My usual pre-shopping kitchen ransacking—I mean leisurely perusal—turned up a few ingredients. I always have a can or two of condensed milk on hand for my iced coffee, so that was taken care of. I also found some granulated sugar, vanilla extract, salt, and all-purpose flour.
There was some Dutch-processed cocoa powder hanging around, but not enough. And I also didn’t have any legit Vietnamese coffee. Gasp! I Tried some Cafe du Monde since it’s cheaper and available locally, but it’s not quite the same. The real thing has to be ordered, so I headed over to Amazon to stock up.
Trung Nguyen coffee is recommended for this recipe, and it’s my favorite brand. It smells like a mix of coffee and chocolate! I also bought regular and black cocoa powder while I was at it. The remaining ingredients (cream cheese, eggs, and butter) were easy to find locally.
The Process
It’s been a minute since I made a batch of brownies, but I remembered the number one rule: no electric mixers. Well, they’re okay if you want cake-like brownies, which I most certainly did not. I’m team fudgy brownies all the way!
Make sure you have a kitchen scale on hand for these coffee-infused brownies since most of the measurements are given in grams.
Coffee & Browned Butter (But not together!)
I kicked off my Vietnamese Coffee Midnight Brownies by brewing the coffee using my phin. The recipe needs about half a cup (0.4 cups if you want to get picky), so I used about 2/3 cup of water. That left me with a touch of leftover coffee by the time I was done, but I would rather have too much than not enough.
I lined the baking pan while the coffee brewed and re-discovered the reason butter and parchment paper are used together. Just folding the paper to fit the pan still leaves loose enough to pop out at inconvenient times. The butter stuck the paper to the pan. Genius!
Next up was quickly browning some butter. Use a light-colored skillet so you can see when the brown bits form in the bottom. I set the heat at 5 to 6 (out of 10) and stir with a wooden spoon for a few minutes. The butter will steam as the after evaporates, and the brown bits form soon after.
Making the Batter
Making the brownie base was slightly more complicated than your typical brownie batter, but not by much. Heating the cocoa-browned butter mixture in a double boiler was new to me.
If you have never used a double boiler, I assure you it’s simple. Just add an inch or two of water to a pan, heat to a boil, and place a heat-proof bowl on top. Do be sure to mind the steam that will escape around the edges and wear oven mitts if it’s too intense.
After that step, the recipe was typical brownie batter. I mixed it all by hand with my trusty wooden spoon.
The Vietnamese coffee swirl was simple, but I wasn’t able to mix it by hand. My cream cheese was very soft, but I had to break out my immersion blender to get a smooth mixture.
Assembly & Baking
Mixing the brownie base and Vietnamese coffee swirl was easier than I thought it would be. First, I added the thick brownie batter to my prepared 8'x8'' pan. The recipe says to add dollops of the coffee swirl, but mine was very thin and liquidy. I poured it on here and there, but it ended up flooding over the entire pan and covering all of the brownie batter.
I was able to dollop on the remaining brownie batter and swirl it all with a toothpick. It looked good, so it was into the oven. My brownies didn’t pass the toothpick test after 25 minutes, so I kept adding time in two-minute increments. They were done at the 31-minute mark.
I let my Vietnamese Coffee Midnight Brownies cool on a wire rack for an hour then covered and refrigerated them overnight before I cut into them. I was happy to see I achieved very dense and fudgy brownies with a pretty coffee swirl.
Timing
This recipe doesn’t list prep or total times, just the cooking time. Here’s how my time was spent:
- 27 minutes to measure all ingredients, brew coffee, and prepare pan
- 13 minutes to make the brownie base
- 5 minutes to make the coffee swirl
- 6 minutes to assemble and swirl together
- 31 minutes to bake
- 1 hour 22 minutes total
That includes the extra few minutes I added until my brownies passed the toothpick test, but not time to cool.