Tripel Peach and Cream Cupcakes

This weekend did not feel like June, at all. Saturday we were lucky to get into the high 40s, and it was pouring rain most of the day! Sunday has brought a bit of sun so far, but I could really go for 80 degrees right about now. This week’s cupcake is inspired by the weather I wish we were having here in the Pacific Northwest!

Peaches and cream is a classic flavor combination for a reason, it’s amazingly delicious. As always, there’s a Sweet and Stout twist to these cupcakes, I baked the peach cake with Elysian Brewing Company’s Bête Blanche Tripel. I wasn’t quite sure what beer would go with a peach cake, but after perusing the beer section I decided a tripel would be a good choice. Tripel’s have that classic Belgian spicy-fruity taste to them, and this beer went really well with the peaches. It’s incredibly easy to drink, too.

The cake had about a cup of pureed peaches in it, and yet only came out with a slight hint of peach flavor. Next time I will dice up some peaches and put them right in the batter. It did bake up nice and soft though, very tasty. For the frosting I used a whipped cream and cream cheese frosting and, oh my, it’s bowl-devouring good. There is quite a bit of leftover frosting, and I’m imagining myself with a giant plate of peach pancakes later topped with a lot of frosting. Whipped cream is the shiz. For real.

To make sure there was no mistaking these cupcakes for anything but peach, I garnished each with a thin slice of it’s fruity namesake. It’s hard not to shove the entire cupcake in your mouth due to it’s delicious nature, but I’m refraining from eating them all. For now.

As I mentioned last week, Dylan and I participated in the Spokane Humane Society’s Parade of Paws. We got a bit soaked, but it was totally worth it. Our dog went into puppy and puddle overload, and had a great time. Our team, A Furry Frenzy, raised over $700 for SHS, and we’re proud to have been a part of that. For your enjoyment, here’s a picture of our dog, Big, soaked after the event.

Hope you had a great weekend, too!

- Jackie & Dylan

Salty Chocolate Pretzel Cupcakes

I’m always looking for that perfect blend of salty and sweet. You may have noticed that theme in the last few weeks of our cupcakes. This time we will round out the salty-sweet trifecta with these Chocolate Pretzel Cupcakes. These last few cupcakes would be the perfect bar food: potato chips, popcorn, and pretzels.

The cake is a slightly salty chocolate cake infused with Firestone Walker’s Velvet Merlin, a smooth and delicious oatmeal stout. You can definitely taste the chocolate and roasted coffee flavor in this beer. It’s perfect for a chocolate cake. I used coarse sea salt in the cake, and as you take a bite, you get the tiniest bit of saltiness. I wasn’t expecting that, but it worked out in our favor.

I was trying out a new recipe for chocolate caramel ganache for the frosting, but it never stiffened up in the fridge. Being the cupcake innovator that I am (and totally modest, by the way), I tossed in a bunch of powdered sugar and whipped it into shape. The frosting had a really interesting flavor, it tasted like ganache but not heavy at all, it was fluffy and quite enjoyable! I crushed some pretzels on top of each cake after frosting and stuck a whole pretzel in to top it off.

I’ve always loved chocolate covered pretzels, and using the frosting as a pretzel dip was a great idea to do with the leftovers. I love when there’s leftover frosting.

I wanted to mention that next weekend, Dylan and I will be walking with our dog (silly dog photo: click here) in the Spokane Humane Society’s Parade of Paws. It’s a walk that raises money for the shelter, and we’re on team “A Furry Frenzy“. Our team has raised almost $300 so far (online)! We’re really proud to be a part of the team. If you’re in the Spokane area, you should come out and join the fun!

Who knows what we’ll come up with for next week. I think I’m running out of things to cover with chocolate, is that even possible?

Cheers!
- Jackie & Dylan

Caramel Popcorn Cupcakes

I hope your extended weekend was filled with fun, good food & great beer! Dylan and I laid low all weekend, then on Monday we decided we had better make some cupcakes. The idea for this week’s cupcake came from a couple different places. Last Thursday, Dylan happened to meet John Bryant of the newly re-invented No-Li Brewhouse, here in Spokane. He ended up buying a couple of each of their new bottles: Crystal Bitter Ale, Born & Raised IPA (my favorite), and Silent Treatment Pale Ale. There were talks about how we should do a No-Li Cupcake, so after we tried each of the beers, we decided to use the Crystal Bitter Ale in this week’s cupcake, Caramel Popcorn.

The cake flavor came about as I was discussing ones we haven’t done yet, with my coworker, JoNelle. She’s always thinking of new cupcake ideas, and when she started to talk about caramel, I knew we were on to something. We both agreed that the Crystal Bitter would be a great match for caramel. The malty smoothness of this ale compliments the rich caramel flavor these cupcakes exude. I made caramel from scratch, and while it’s kind of messy, you can really taste the difference between it, and store bought caramel. The ingredients are really simple: just sugar, water, butter, and cream. I wanted to add the popcorn in to give the cupcakes the salty contrast that goes really well with caramel.

Before we made the cupcakes, we had to make the popcorn. Using the air popper, we made a ton of it, and spread it out on a cookie sheet (with wax paper lining it – I did not want to clean that mess up). After melting chocolate chips in a double boiler, I drizzled it over the popcorn along with some caramel, tossed in peanuts, sprinkled with a little bit of sea salt and put it in the fridge to cool off.

The cake turned out really soft and delicious. Basically it’s a yellow cake with added caramel and the Crystal Bitter, of course. The frosting was made using browned butter and powdered sugar, and I’m surprised how much it tastes like caramel despite having none added to it. We garnished each cupcake with a good chunk of the chocolate caramel peanut popcorn we made earlier, and voila! Caramel Popcorn Cupcakes were born.

After one bite, I knew that people were going to love these, they are SO good!

Chocolate Covered Potato Chip Cupcakes

It’s been quite the whirlwind of a weekend for us here at Sweet and Stout! With our wedding rapidly approaching, we’ve been getting pretty busy taking care of all the fun little details that go along with planning such an event. We were also plenty busy this weekend doing cupcake and beer related activities!

On Friday evening we made a guest appearance at Spokane Real Deals and their Girls Night Out event. We sold some cupcakes, and got to talk with some really great people, including Rachelle and Kris, the owners. We also met Ginger of Peace, Love & Pearls, who does great work revamping vintage jewelry. Ginger actually inspired our idea for this week’s cupcake flavor, but I’ll get to that.  To top it all off, we got to meet Dan, of Duo Brewing, who happened to be in Spokane this Sunday. We’ve been following Duo Brewing for a while now, so it was really awesome to meet half of the duo behind the beer. We are definitely looking forward to trying some of their beers in the near future.

Anyways, I know you all really came here to read about our cupcakes, so here they are:

That’s a chocolate covered potato chip on top of a chocolate cake, with chocolate frosting, of course! While I was talking to Ginger on Friday evening, she mentioned that she used to have a business that made chocolate covered potato chips. This sounded like such a tasty idea, I decided that we had to give it a try. Making them was quite easy, just melt some chocolate and dip in your favorite chip. Let me tell you, I’m really upset I haven’t tried this sooner in life. I’m sure they have no health benefits, whatsoever, but, they were the perfect balance of salty and sweet. Definitely worth trying.

For the cake we used Rogue Chocolate Stout, a deliciously rich chocolate stout, that paired fabulously with our chocolate cake. If you are into chocolate beers, I highly recommend you give this one a try. The roasted malt flavor combined with the chocolate is sweet and toasty, and there’s just a hint of bitterness that balances it out. For the frosting I used a regular cream cheese base, then just added the leftover melted chocolate that I had dipped the potato chips into. Looking back on the last year+ of this cupcake blog, I don’t think I’ve ever done just a chocolate cream cheese frosting. That’s almost hard to believe, considering how much I love chocolate. It was pretty much the tastiest chocolate frosting ever, and I will definitely incorporate it into more cupcake recipes! (Chocoholic-4-life)

The only thing that bothered me about this cupcake creation was that the part of the chip that was covered in chocolate got a little soft, not necessarily soggy, just not as crispy as I wanted it to be. I’m not sure what would be the fix for it, but I’m willing to eat plenty more until I figure it out. So, let us know what you think– would you try a chocolate covered potato chip (on a cupcake)?

- Jackie & Dylan

Recipe: Rosemary Lemonade Cupcakes

Because we love you all from the bottom of our beer bottles, we’re sharing a recipe this time! We’re also posting the recipe because the last time we used a Dogfish Head beer and didn’t post a recipe, there was hell to pay. We’ve learned our lesson. Now, I introduce to you, Rosemary Lemonade Cupcakes using Dogfish Head’s Saison du Buff, which is a collaboration beer between Dogfish Head, Stone, and Victory. This collaboration happened first in 2010, and now, again, in 2012. If you haven’t got your hands on this beer yet, I highly recommend that you do. This beer is delicious, and is a perfect match for these rosemary infused lemon cupcakes.

On to the recipe!

Rosemary Lemonade Cupcakes
(Makes about 18 cupcakes)

Ingredients:
1 cup water
1/4 cup rosemary leaves
1/2 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice (about 2 lemons)

2 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 stick butter (8 tablespoons)
Lemon zest of 1 lemon
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup beer
1/2 cup rosemary lemon juice (from above)

Directions:

1. In a small sauce pan, bring 1 cup water to a boil. Once boiling, add 1/4 cup rosemary leaves (we used dried rosemary). Boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and add 1/2 cup lemon juice. Let sit while you prepare the cupcake batter.

2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Place paper cupcake liners in pans, set aside.

3. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

4. In a large bowl, beat butter and lemon zest until creamy. Add in sugar, then beat again until combined. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating between each addition.

5. Beat in 1/4 of the dry ingredients, then add beer to the batter. Mix well.

6. Using a strainer to separate the rosemary leave from the juice, strain 1/2 cup of the rosemary lemon water into a measuring cup. (Save the remaining rosemary lemon juice to use in the frosting, see recipe below) Mix this alternating with the rest of the dry ingredients into the batter, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients.

7. Fill cupcake liners with a 1/4 cup of batter, place in preheated oven and bake for about 15 minutes. Use a toothpick inserted in the center to tell if it’s done after 15 minutes. It should come out clean.

After your cupcakes have cooled, you can prepare the frosting.

Rosemary Lemonade Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:
1 stick butter (8 tablespoons), room temperature
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, room temperature
2 1/2+ cups powdered sugar
left over rosemary lemon juice from cake recipe above

Directions:

1. Beat butter and cream cheese together until smooth and creamy

2. Beat in powdered sugar, 1 cup at a time. Add in leftover rosemary lemon juice and beat well. If the frosting is too runny, just beat in more powdered sugar.

3. Frost cupcakes after they’ve cooled, and enjoy!

If you make these cupcakes, please tell us how they turned out for you in the comments, we’d love to hear about them! If you have an idea for a cupcake, or a beer to use, let us know! We’re always willing to try something new.

- Jackie & Dylan

Kiwi Cupcakes

This week’s challenge, aside from Dylan and I participating in Bloomsday (a 7.46 mile walk/run), was to create a cupcake based on a random fruit we picked at the grocery store. We’re always trying to do something a little different here at Sweet and Stout (in case you haven’t noticed!). When we arrived at the store, we discovered that kiwi was on sale, so that’s what we decided to use. For the beer, we picked Monk’s Indescretion (great name!), a Belgian Style Specialty Ale from Sound Brewing. On the label the beer says that it’s “an intense tropical hoppy aroma & flavor, with balanced bitterness”, seemed a good fit, so we got it. This beer was VERY good, and, like the label also says, “scarily drinkable” with an ABV at 10%. Wowza.

I’ve never baked kiwi into anything, so we just improvised the whole thing. The first thing we did was chop up the kiwi and boiled it with some water to make them nice and soft. Then we reduced it down a bit, while mashing them (with a potato masher), and finally added a little sugar to make a mushy, mashy, kiwi sauce. It definitely wasn’t the most attractive color, however it tasted delicious.

We strained out some of the juice and set it aside for the frosting, then used the mashed up fruit in the cake. I used a recipe that I have for a lemon cake and replaced the lemons with kiwi, a simple swap. When the cake came out of the oven, it really looked like a lemon poppy seed cake. For the frosting I went with a cream cheese one (shocking, I know), and added the kiwi juice I had saved from earlier. I topped each off with half a slice of freshly cut kiwi, took a bite, and was very pleased with the outcome.

Makes me wonder what other types of fruit we can base a cupcake off of. Anyone else have some ideas?

- Jackie & Dylan

P.S.- We’re so glad that we decided to wear our Sweet and Stout t-shirts to the Bloomsday race. Many people came running up behind us to find out “Where Beer and Cupcake Unite”, and they all seemed pretty excited that there are beer cupcakes here in Spokane. So, thanks to all the people that said “hi” to us, and we hope you’ll get a chance to try some of our cupcakes soon!

BeerRita Cupcakes

This past weekend we put a twist on the classic margarita, turning it into a beer-rita. If you missed it, we did another beer cocktail a couple weeks ago when we made beer mojitos (and cupcakes). Since they turned out really great, I thought we’d give it a go with beer margarita cupcakes. I’m really starting to dig beer cocktails, and definitely will try more in the future. First things first. You need a BeerRita in your life, and here’s how you make one (or 2):

Ingredients

1/2 lime, cut into wedges (4 wedges)

sea salt to line the rims of the glasses

1 (12 oz.) bottle of beer, we used Biere de Mars (Lips of Faith) from New Belgium

1/4 cup limeade concentrate, thawed

1/4 cup tequila (or more!)

Ice to fill 2 glasses

Rub lime wedge around the edge of Weizen Glass. Put some salt in your hand and rub the edges of the glass through it to lightly coat the edge. Put beer, limeade & tequila in a pitcher, then load each glass up with ice and pour beer mix on top. Top with a fresh lime wedge, then get drinking!

Now that you’ve got a decent drink in your hand, let me tell you about these BeerRita cupcakes we made.

This is a yellow cake heavily flavored with lime. We’re talking lime zest and lime juice, oh, and we did throw a shot of tequila in there for good measure. For the beer we used Biere de Mars (see link above) from New Belgium Brewing. New Belgium seems to be taking over our refrigerator lately, and there’s a good reason for that, they make fantastic beer! Anyways, I just knew the Biere de Mars would be a perfect match. It’s an ale brewed with spices and has a citrus kick to it, perfect pairing for the sweet and tart of the lime flavor these cupcakes were bursting with.

The frosting is a lime cream cheese one, we skipped on adding tequila to it (we totally could have, if we hadn’t run out of tequila, oops!). Then to garnish the cake, I put a pinch of sea salt on top to pull it all together. These cupcakes were delicious, and would be perfect for a summer day, or any day you feel like getting sloshed on tequila and beer. Drinking gives you the munchies, sometimes. Seeing as it’s just about May, these might be a good way to celebrate Cinco de Mayo as well!

- Jackie & Dylan

Blueberry Chocolate

Blueberries and chocolate combined is entirely underrated. It is a fantastic combination of flavors, and I highly recommend trying it. This weekend we created a chocolate cake using North Coast Brewing’s Old Rasputin Imperial Stout, and combined it with some frozen blueberries, best idea, ever (maybe). Not only is blueberry and chocolate a great combination, this beer is spectacular. Old Rasputin weighs in at 9% ABV, so even after a half bottle (1 half for cupcakes, 1 half for me), I was feeling pretty tipsy.

The cake itself was a basic chocolate, the only thing different was that we added in about a cup of blueberries and we puréed them in a blender before adding them into the batter. The cake turned out dark and delicious with a hint of stout flavor and blueberry. Perfect. What didn’t work out great for me was the frosting. I was avoiding making a trip to the grocery store, so I used the butter and left over cream cheese I had on hand. Well, I guess the butter wasn’t too happy with my blueberries and lemon I added to it, and the frosting separated before I could even get it on the cakes.

Being that it was a beautiful, summer-like day, here in Spokane, I decided to pair the cake with some Tillamook Mudslide ice cream and forgo the frosting all together. Sometimes, cupcakes don’t need frosting, and this was definitely an awesome alternative! I topped the dish with some thawed blueberries, and now I can’t wait to go back and have more.

- Jackie & Dylan

Jalapeno Chocolate

After eating some jalapenos this weekend (with bacon & cream cheese, drool …) I thought doing a spicy Jalapeno cupcake with some raspberry sauce sounded like a good idea, so we went for it! On a trip to Huckleberry’s, I found the perfect beer to fit my needs, the latest in a series called “12 Beers of the Apocalypse” from Elysian Brewing Company in Seattle. This one is called Peste Chocolate Chili Ale. It’s made with cocoa, cinnamon, and a blend of chiptole, cayenne, ancho, guajillo and pasilla peppers. This beer is spicy! (So spicy, it made my nose run.) I loved the beer, I could have drank a couple pints (if I had bought more than 1 bottle). If you get a chance to check out this series of beer, I highly recommend it.

I just noticed that the frosting matches the color of the caterpillar on the label. Totally meant to do that.

For the cupcakes, we used a basic chocolate cake and just added diced jalapeno to it, along with a cup of this beer. The cakes came out of the (toaster) oven and looked perfect! I love when that happens. After they cooled, we made a raspberry cream cheese frosting to top them off. I think I may have added a bit too much raspberry puree, the frosting was really runny, oh well. I could have thickened it up if I added another ton of powdered sugar, but I left it alone. I tossed in some cayenne pepper into the frosting to help bring the heat, then dipped the cupcakes in to finish them off.

Looking back, I probably would have added a little more jalapeno and cayenne to the cake batter. There was just a hint of heat to the chocolate cake, and I would have liked a little more to really match this beer. These cupcakes aren’t the prettiest we’ve ever made (except for those wrappers, check them out! Woo!), but they definitely tasted great, and I would happily make these again. (And I will happily buy this beer again, delicious!)

- Jackie & Dylan

Mojito Cupcakes

Maybe I’m wishing too hard for it to be summer, but this Sunday, it was pretty nice outside. We wanted to make a fun cupcake to go with a warm summer (or near spring-like) day. We both enjoy a tasty mojito, so why not flavor a cupcake after one? Plus, I found a recipe for a beer mojito, and could not resist giving it a try. Have you heard of beer cocktails? I don’t think it’s anything new, but I think it’s becoming more popular. Here’s a link I found to the beer mojito, and I know there are plenty of other good beer cocktail recipes out there.

For these cupcakes I wanted to use a pale ale, something that would compliment the lime and mint flavor that mojitos are known for. Dylan recently found the spring release of the Ninkasi four-pack, which included Spring Reign, a delicious pale ale. We decided that would be the best beer to use, plus I was saving the Tricerahops all for myself. (Seriously, if you like double IPAs, Tricerahops is the shizz.) Anyways, the crisp taste and the light hop character of the Spring Reign was a perfect match for these cupcakes.

To get the mint flavor, I steeped some mint leaves in the beer (heated up on the stove). After letting it cool, I added a little lime juice. Tasting the finished cupcakes, I’d go back and add a bit more mint leaves. You can definitely pull a lime flavor when you take a bite of these, the mint is a little subdued. Of course, this doesn’t mean it was a bad cupcake. In fact, they were quite delicious. We used a cream cheese frosting flavored with more fresh squeezed lime juice, and garnished each with a mint leaf.

I think lime would be a really good flavor for us to add on to our lineup for the summer. We did a lime cupcake with meringue last year, and these are much better. I don’t know about you, but I can hardly wait for summer to get here. Patio beers, sunshine, and cupcakes sound really good right now!

Cheers,

- Jackie & Dylan