Back East Ex Machina Imperial Stout and 100 Days of Real Food Peanut Butter Cookies

We had a little dinner party before our recent game night. Our wives, kids, and friends got together, had a meal and debriefed about our week. This time was a little different because all the food was from the same cookbook, 100 days of real food by Lisa Leake. She focuses on wholesome ingredients and avoids all processed foods. It was a great time as was the food. The menu included BBQ chicken quesadillas, vegetable corn chowder, macaroni casserole, and some cinnamon cashew popcorn. We hope this is the beginning of recipe book dinner parties as a thing we often do. For our cookie and beer paring, we went with a 'whole food' cookie and a 'wholly awesome' stout. 

The Beer: Back East brewing has been putting out some quality cans of beer. This one is roasted, toasted, and roasted some more. This beer is big and boozy and roasty. The malt and coffee notes feel like they are dark roasted espresso bean with a good bit of bitterness to back it up.

The Cookie:  These cookies are “real food” cookies. The ingredients list is simple: whole wheat flour, egg, maple syrup, peanut butter, peanuts, and butter. Easy, clean, not too sweet, peanut buttery, delicious. The crunch level is low with these cookies, they are soft and pillowy. The maple syrup is the only sugar and, when making it, I thought that would have been a dominant flavor, but it ended up being very mild. Since the recipe called for unsalted peanuts I threw in a handful, but I would have preferred them to be chopped up a bit. 

The Pairing: When I had the cookies, I was concerned the stout would overpower the mild peanut butter flavor. My fears were for naught and the dunk allowed us to get the roasted flavors of the beer, backed up by creamy peanut butter. I definitely ate this in a high cookie-to-beer ratio, but it was a satisfying treat.