Mocha Porter Cupcakes
What happens when you take a flavor that all north westerners truly love and decide to turn it into a beer? You get Rogue Brewery’s Mocha Porter. This beer is a wonderful blend of malt and hops that leaves you with a creamy mocha flavor that stays with you long after you put that first taste down. A little history of the beer from Rogue states that the: “Mocha Porter was once known as New Porter, in honor of the town of Newport, Oregon and home of Rogue Ales.” They also say the beer was made to be: “dedicated to the chocolate lover in each of us.” The Mocha Porter per Rogue Brewery is said to pair well with desserts and that’s exactly what we did.
Taking this Mocha Porter, some instant coffee and our talent of creating wonderful cupcakes, we made these tasty looking treats. Combining what would be a seemingly innocent idea of a mocha cupcake and adding this wonderfully flavorful beer to the mix made these moist and intoxicating treats. After we had the batter mixed up we both tasted it and decided that we needed to come up with a frosting that matched the richness of the cupcake, so we turned to our liquor collection.
After much consideration and debate we decided to really play up the coffee flavor that the cupcakes where hinting at. The cupcakes themselves tasted much like a chocolate coffee cake with the robust flavor of the Mocha Porter peaking through the cracks, so how could we boost the coffee flavor? We decided that the best way to do this was to make a frosting that was a mix of Kahlua and Bailey’s Irish Cream. As a final touch we added coffee beans to the tops of the cupcakes as a garnish. We could not be happier with how these came out. Hopefully you found these pictures as mouth watering as we found the cupcakes to be.
– Dylan
Chocolate Cherry Black Ale Cupcakes
I was in the baking mood this past weekend and had a new recipe to try out. This one just called for 1 cup of any kind of beer, so I chose New Belgium 1554 Enlightened Black Ale. The thought of dark chocolate, cherries and the Black Ale sounded like it would blend well together.
What was really interesting about this recipe is that there are whole cherries baked right in the batter. I used a lighter version of cherry pie filling instead of using fresh cherries. It’s definitely not cherry season here yet. The pie cherries worked out really well, giving the chocolate batter a tint of red. The cherries remained soft and flavorful, blending well with the chocolate batter. This recipe called for walnuts and I did add them, but next time I think I will omit them. They didn’t take away from the flavor but I don’t feel that they added very much either. I used a store bought white frosting, mostly because I wanted the bright white to contrast well with a cherry garnish on top. The frosting turned out pretty well and it had the consistency and taste of a soft marshmallow.
I would say these cupcakes were a success. I brought a few of the extras into work and I got all compliments. I think next time I need to just make half a batch as there are at least a dozen of these left sitting on my kitchen table. I also have 4 Enlightened Black Ale’s leftover, but I’m not complaining!
– Jackie
A new St. Paddy’s day tradition
A delicious pint of Guinness.
Although I’m not Irish (I’m Scottish), Dylan is quite the Irishman and I really wanted to create something special for St. Patrick’s day. We both share an undying love for Guinness, so when I came across a recipe for Chocolate Irish Stout cupcakes with Irish Cream frosting, I had to try them.
Let me tell you, baking with beer is twice as fun as baking without, whether it goes in the recipe or not.
This recipe called 1 cup of beer so I went with the 24 ounce bottle of Guinness Extra Stout we had in the fridge, poured out 1 cup for my recipe and we shared the rest. The batter was very dense, like scooping fudge into the cupcake trays. They smelled amazing while they were baking and 21 minutes later they were done. I went with the extra stout because I wanted the flavor of the beer to be noticeable in the finished cupcake. Although I haven’t gone back and made this recipe with Guinness Draught, I think this was a good choice. The final cupcakes had a distinct stout flavor which tied in well with the chocolate and Irish Cream flavors.
I had a recipe for the frosting, but it wasn’t getting the consistency that I wanted so I improvised on it a little bit. Instead of a fluffy frosting, it turned into more of an Irish Creme icing, which was fine by me. It was made with powdered sugar, Bailey’s Irish Creme and I threw in a little Kahlua just for fun. In the end it was somewhere between frosting and icing, but it didn’t really matter what you called it, it was delicious.
These cupcakes turned into an alcoholic’s dream. The dark chocolate and the Guinness blended perfectly together and the Bailey’s frosting was a great compliment. You could taste the alcohol, but it wasn’t overpowering. I brought in 85% of these cupcakes to work (so I wouldn’t keep all those calories to myself) and they were well received. They also went REALLY fast. Imagine that!
I would make these cupcakes again, so far these are my favorite.
– Jackie
Sweet and Stout 
