Beer + Chocolate = Yes please!!

A few weeks back we had a house warming party and my friend Rob brought us the funnest gift -a 6 pack mix of random beers! Obviously Rob knows who he's shopping for. Well one of them was a raspberry ale which I thought would be great in a cake. Why not.

I looked around and found a recipe from a fellow blogspotter - http://freethoseradicals.blogspot.com/ which used Guinness as an ingredient. Well, I'm actually not that into Guinness (don't tell my Irish relatives!) but I do love the idea of booze and cake! I'm thinking it would actually have lended a great flavor. Maybe I'll try it that way sometime later.

Here is my modified version. Note that I had to add more chocolate because there's never enough! Clearly it was agood call because everyone LOVED them! I made 4 different kinds of cupcakes for the party and these guys were all snatched up. I'd say that's pretty good proof!

1 cup of ale (or stout!)
2 sticks of butter
3/4 cup of cocoa powder
1 large bar of Special Dark chocolate melted (I used one of those huge baking bars)
2 cups flour
1 3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 tablespoon baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
Rounded 1/2 cup of cream cheese

Preheat oven to 350 F. Melt chocolate bar and set aside. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Whisk in the cocoa powder, and add stout. Slowly wisk in melted chocolate. Let the mixture cool. Blend flour, sugar, baking soda, salt together. In a large bowl, beat eggs and cream cheese together. (**This is much more difficult than I thought it would be. Maybe nuking cream cheese in the microwave would have helped) When blended, add the stout/chocolate mixture to the eggs about a quarter cup at a time, and blend, continuing this step until the eggs are tempered. Add the flour mixture and stir until well-mixed. Fill cupcake liners about 2/3 full. Bake about 20 minutes. Yields approx. 24 cupcakes.

These cupcakes turned out more like brownies. Probably the chocolate bar. I think next time I make these (and there will definitely be a next time!) I will make them in mini cupcake pan like brownie bites.

I made up a simple chocolate icing with orange flavor to go on top but really it doesn't need any icing. If I'd had more time, I might have made up a dark chocolate icing just to make it over the top tasty!