I quickly remedied that when, after looking through my recipes, I noticed one labeled "Beer Cupcakes". They sounded good, but when I noticed chocolate was involved, I almost changed my mind. I decided, though, that the beer and the cream cheese frosting might make them good enough for even me to like. I was right.
I used an entire bottle of Guinness for one batch of cupcakes, lots of flour, brown sugar, sour cream, vanilla, baking soda, butter and cocoa powder.
First, the Guinness and butter are combined and heated in a saucepan.
Next, the brown sugar and the cocoa get whisked in, and this is where I fell in love. The smell that was coming from the pan was so intoxicating, I wanted to eat it with a spoon right then and there.
But, I didn't. Instead, I continued with the recipe and mixed the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla and added it to the beer mixture. Looks pretty good, doesn't it? Glad I finally got a coated whisk!
The flour and baking soda are then sifted together and folded into the beer mixture (batter). Folding is always hard for me, because I never seem to get the two mixtures to incorporate in an amount of time that seems appropriate for not over folding.
Then, bake. As you can see, I had too many cupcakes for one pan, and not enough for two. I have been told that you should space them out in this situation, so they cook more evenly, so that's what I did.
I am really liking cream cheese frosting lately. It is not as overpowering or as greasy seeming as buttercream, and cream cheese frosting seems to compliment, or bring out the flavors, of the cake more. Cream cheese, sugar and milk made a great frosting to top these cupcakes.
These cupcakes had a good beer flavor, they were not too sweet, they were moist, and they went very quickly at our house. I will definitely make these again. And, I guess I have to stop saying how much I don't like chocolate since I've found so many tasty recipes to bake that use chocolate. That's a crazy thought!
