Beer and cupcakes!

Evolution Craft Brewing's delicious
Rise Up Stout, outside their tasting room.

So I work at this awesome coffee shop....and they are friends with some people at a brewery....



Hence, we have a coffee stout, made with our coffee! I had to get a growler of it and bake with it, of course! How could I resist?

Note to self....chocolate mousse frosting is not the frosting
of choice when it's a million degrees outside. That shit melts and then
looks like poo. Tasty.

So I made Rise Up Stout Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Mousse Frosting.


Yeah.


And then I shared them with my coworkers, 'cuz I'm awesome like that.

Coffee, beer and cupcakes. What more could you want out of life?

Chocolate Caramel Cookies..with beer of course.

I've basically decided that beer needs to be in everything that I bake. I struggled to figure out HOW to include it in these cookies and it's not really noticeable in the final product. I think I'll have to tweak cutting out more butter and/or eggs to make room for more beer.

Be warned that these cookies expand a lot, so a little bit of dough goes a long way. Potentially, these cookies could be really good with other stuff in them...more caramel, chocolate chunks...bacon....whatever.

Chocolate Caramel Cookies (Makes about 50 cookies)

Seriously, this recipe makes 50+ cookies.
What? I live with two dudes who can put away a lot of cookies.
I might have eaten a few too.

½ cup butter (1 stick)

10 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips (or other, fancier chocolate of your choosing)

¼ cup beer (preferably something dark, like a porter) I used Evolution’s Lucky 7 Porter

1 ½ cup flour
1 tsp cornstarch
2 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
3 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 package caramels for topping

Dough, a beer, chocolate and beer.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Whisk together flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt.

Melt butter, chocolate over low heat until completely melted. Add beer and remove from heat. Allow to cool.

Mix eggs, sugar and vanilla in a large bowl. Slowly add in chocolate mixture and mix completely. Begin adding flour mixture in thirds. Make sure to mix completely before adding more flour mixture.

Drop by small spoonfuls onto baking sheet. Unwrap caramels and slice in half. Place one half on top of each mound of cookie dough.

Bake for 10 minutes. Let cool. Eat and enjoy!

If I had a candy thermometer,
I would make caramel all the time.
And be really fat.

I can't lie...I bought a 12 oz. bag of chocolate chips...and proceeded to munch on the other 2 oz. while baking these cookies...hence the odd amount. I did manage to save a few for the last batch of cookies, which got mixed in to the dough. They chocolate chunks definitely added to the overall deliciousness.

Cinnamon Pumpkin Muffins

Pretty please with brown sugar and cinnamon on top?

Cinnamon Pumpkin Muffins
(makes 12)

INGREDIENTS:
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup flax seed
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon

1 15-oz can pumpkin pie filling (unsweetened)
2 large eggs
½ cup packed brown sugar
¾ cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

½ tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp brown sugar

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat the oven to 350F and grease muffin pan.

Stir together flour, flax seed, cinnamon and baking powder in a small bowl.

Mix together pumpkin, eggs, sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl until smooth, then mix in flour mixture until just combined. Pour batter into greased muffin pan, filling each well about ¾ full.

Mix cinnamon and brown sugar together in the now empty flour bowl. Spinkle tops with cinnamon-sugar mixture.

Nom!

Bake until puffed and golden brown, about 20 to 25 minutes.

Let cool and then eat!

Chocolate Beer Cupcakes with Honey Spice Frosting and Cocoa Nibs

Recipe adapted from Dave Leiberman

This is a chocolate cake recipe that I have used for many years now. The originally recipe calls for sour cream....which I find completely and utterly disgusting. I also forgot that the recipe called for this, as it’s been a couple years since I last made it....so I didn’t have sour cream. Instead, I added an extra egg and was quite pleased with the result. Typically, this cake tends to be overly moist and crumbly. This was not so with my alteration and was a lot easier to work with.

Ingredients

• ¾  cup unsweetened cocoa, plus more for dusting finished cupcakes
• 1 ½  cups sugar
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Pinch fine salt
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 2 tsp cinnamon

• 1 ½ cups of the beer of your choice
• 1 stick butter, melted
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 4 large eggs

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the cocoa, sugar, flour, baking soda, and salt.

In another medium mixing bowl, combine the stout, melted butter, and vanilla.
Beat in eggs, 1 at time.
Gradually mix the dry ingredients into the wet mixture.

Line a muffin tin with cupcake liners. Place approximately ⅓ cup of batter into each tin. Bake for about 10 minutes and then rotate the pans. Bake another 10 to 11 minutes until risen, nicely domed, and set in the middle but still soft and tender. Cool before turning out.

Frosting
The beer that I chose to use didn’t have as much chocolate flavor as I wanted, but the honey and spice notes were there. I decided that I wanted to emphasis that with my frosting, so I chose to make a honey spice frosting.
1 stick softened butter
2 ½ to 3 cups powdered sugar
2 tbls honey (I used a pepper honey, which I picked up from The Bee Folks)
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp chili powder
Cocoa nibs for garnish


Cream the butter and powdered sugar together, ½ cup of sugar at a time. When you reach the desired consistency, add cinnamon and chili powder. Frost cupcakes when cool and sprinkle with cocoa nibs.

The honey made the frosting extremely sweet, which was a good match for the less sweet cupcakes. The cupcakes themselves were dark and chocolately with a hint of the beer flavor. Had I used a darker beer (like the guiness or stout the recipe is typically used with), I might have been able to taste the beer a bit more. The spice in the frosting is subtle, but the honey and chili went well together, as the honey I used already had notes of spice in it. The cocoa nibs on top tied it all together with their dark chocolate, totally unsweet crunch.

I have a dream...

My cupcakes can only hope to be this adorable.
Image taken from Cakewrecks, made by Zoey Cakes of Baldwinsville, NY.

I have a dream. It’s true.

My dream is to make delicious baked goods. All the time.

It’s a simple dream, but it’s something I love to do.

Right now, I want to make cupcakes. So why don’t I go to the kitchen and make some god damn cupcakes right this second? Because these things take time. I don’t just buy a box of cake mix at my local box store and make that. No, I CREATE baked goods from scratch with exciting flavors and a little bit of experimentation. The kind of things I like to make take time. They take exploration of flavors and trips to specialty cooking stores. They take finding the right ingredients and ways to combine them into something awesome.

They also take actually having cupcake tins(ie. a muffin pan) in your possession....which I currently don’t have. With a quick trip to the store though, that will be remedied and I will be ready to make my next creation, involving THIS. I am so excited.