Guinness cupcakes

No, you read that correctly. There isn't any missing punctuation. Not "Guinness and cupcakes". Guinness cupcakes.

My adoration for Guinness is well documented.
See here.
And here.
And... in real life when I'm not busy trying new beers to tell you fine readers about.

Well, I've taken that love to new heights by baking Guinness cupcakes. This weekend was my friend Andrew's birthday. I made him cupcakes for his birthday last year, so I put the offer out there again, asking, "What flavor cupcakes are most ideal?" His response was, "I would go with whatever your forte is. Or something wildly inventive that you've never tried before."

I don't really have a cupcake forte, and I found this recipe and have been saving it for the right occasion. Here are my amendments to that recipe:

• I used white sugar due to a smoky debacle involving the last of the dark brown sugar in our house. When brown sugar gets hard, you can fix that by nuking it for a few seconds. Well, after a few seconds it was still hard, so I added a few more... and it basically morphed into a smoking brown marshmallow too fast for me to rescue it. Since that blog says the original recipe called for white, I figured, we'll see how these turn out and try again with brown sugar in the future.
• These cupcakes are super duper moist, so you may need to bake them an extra few minutes if you intend to get them out of the muffin tin still resembling cupcakes, and not a pile of cake crumbs. Actually, my plan for next is to use those little muffin paper cup thingies.

These turned out DELICIOUS. The Guinness is well balanced by the sugar and cocoa; it's not too sweet, nor does it taste like a solid piece of beer. The cream cheese glaze is a perfect compliment, too. I will do this again. However, it should also be noted that this recipe makes about 26 normal sized cupcakes. Since the blog didn't mention that, I called Tom, who was going to be part of the entourage celebrating Andrew's birthday last night. I asked if he thought I should err on the side of too many cupcakes, to which he responded, "I don't think there is such a thing as too many cupcakes." I brought a dozen and a half to Andrew's house, I have another dozen or so that are in a tupperware for a birthday tomorrow, and there are still about two dozen at my parents' house. Or, were. Dad seemed to like them.

So, no new beers to report for now, but this is definitely a worthwhile recipe. I'd also be curious to try it with other stouts, like Wells and Young's Chocolate Stout, which was a really heavy beer but not too sweet considering what it's labelled as, or Brooklyn Brewing's Black Chocolate Stout, which has already been mentioned here at DBF, or Left Hand's Milk Stout, which is another heavy, slightly-sweet stout (say that three times fast!) that I have enjoyed... I have it on my list as something I tried at Stuff Yer Face but I thought I'd had it before... which leads to:

another digression, though at least this one is related to the dessert theme: my college had an entire week between the end of final exams and graduation, to make sure people were actually eligible for graduating. It was basically an entire week to just hang out with your friends before graduating. I recall one afternoon spent with a few friends trying to figure out what the perfect beer was for the beer float-- we tried various fancy stouts purchased in a mixed six pack from Kybecca in downtown Fredericksburg, Virginia. I don't remember all of the beers we had that day, since these were the days before the official beer database, but I do know that we decided a milk stout was the winner with some French vanilla ice cream on top. I'm almost certain it was Left Hand's.

Anyway. No new score, just some delicious desserts. Try them! Or invite me over to make them for you.