Chocolate Stout Cupcakes with Coffee Ganache

based off of this recipe who got the idea from this recipe



I am like the birthday cake fairy or something. Anyway, I asked my friend's boyfriend if I should make her a chocolate cake, a rum cake, an espresso cake or a stout cake for her birthday. And he said, and I quote, "How about a chocolate stout cake! Combine two of her true loves (I think I come in third)." So chocolate stout it is! The Bon Appetit recipe seems to be the base recipe for all of the chocolate stout cake recipes on the internet... But I like the Smitten Kitchen version... mostly because it used a better frosting, but also because she HALVED the recipe (and I still ended up with 28 cupcakes).

This cake is super rich and has a really intense flavor. It doesn't taste like stout, but it sort of has the essence of stout. Basically, it's awesome. I am always worried when I try new recipes for people's birthdays since it's kind of important that it tastes good, but this was definitely a winner. I think the coffee ganache goes really well with the cake. Like I said, the cake has such a strong flavor, and I don't think you'd want to have too much frosting to take away from that. Although, I kind of want to make an Irish Cream frosting/ganache in the future...!

Ingredients
Cake
1 cup stout (like Guinness)
1 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
3/4 cup sour cream (the recipe called for 2/3 cup but I am bad at measuring!)
2 tsp vanilla


Ganache
1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 tsp instant coffee
splash Kahula
splash vanilla

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350. Line cupcake tray (or trays if you have more than one!) with paper or butter and grease the tray if you don't have cupcake liners.
2. In a medium saucepan, simmer the stout and butter together over medium heat, whisking slowly until butter is totally melted.
3. Whisk the cocoa into the butter/stout. This is going to taste really bitter, so if you are like me and taste everything, don't be surprised/disappointed. I mean, obviously... it's bitter beer and cocoa, what I did I expect it to taste like?
4. Turn the heat off on the burner and allow the mixture to cool a little while you're doing the next steps.
5. Mix flour, sugar, baking soda and salt in a bowl.
6. Beat eggs, sour cream and vanilla in a large bowl. You can do this by hand, but if you are using a mixer, do this at a low speed and keep it on low for everything.
7. Mix stout mixture into egg mixture and beat until just combined. You don't want to mix out all of the carbonation (or nitrogen-ation or whatever it would be if you're using Guiness).
8. Add flour mixture and beat until not quite combined.
9. Fold batter together with a rubber spatula until completely combined.
10. Pour into prepared cupcake pan, fill each cupcake about 2/3 full of batter. Bake for ~25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
11. Cool completely before frosting.
12. To make the ganache, melt the chocolate chips, cream, instant coffee, vanilla and Kahula over a double boiler and stir until smooth and shiny. Allow to rest for a few minutes before dipping the cupcakes into the ganache. This made juuuust enough to frost 28 cupcakes (and I made the cupcakes kind of larger than they should have been, so if you have more than this many cupcakes, you might want to add a little more chocolate/cream).

Beet Velvet Cupcakes (let's not call them Red Velvet, OK?)

A friend told me that red velvet cakes were red because during WW2, there wasn't enough chocolate to go around so people started putting beets into their cakes to make them dark. Buuuuuut, other people have told me red velvet cakes are red because of the vinegar's reaction with the buttermilk. Either way, almost all red velvet recipes call for a whole bottle of liquid red food coloring. I wanted to make red velvet cupcakes without red food coloring, so I decided to try the beet route.



Not really red, eh? I did a lot of things wrong!

I found a recipe that sounded promising. (The owner of that website asks that her recipes not reproduced online, but that we just link to her blog. So I am obliging!) I decided to double the recipe because it seemed small.

I went out and bought beets from the farmer's market. Candy cane beets! They sound so sweet and delicious! But then I get home and after boiling and removing their red skin, I realize they are red and white striped. Like candy canes. I didn't take a picture, but this is pretty much what they look like:

So much white under the deceptively red skin! Oops. I decided to use them anyway because I had no backup plan.

I bought 2 bunches of beets, which in total were 8 fairly large beets. After boiling them, I realized I had no real way to "puree" them--no food processor or masher! We do have a muddling rod for making mojitos though! So I smashed them in a glass measuring cup with that. It totaled just over 1.5 cups which was perfect since I was doubling the recipe. I did a pretty good job smashing them together. Only one person told me he got a bit of beet stuck in his teeth while eating a cupcake!

I followed the recipe pretty much exactly except: I used 1 stick of butter and 1/2 cup of vegetable oil instead of 1 cup; and I didn't have yogurt, so I added a little more milk. I think the yogurt was probably important in developing the red color, since most recipes call for either buttermilk or yogurt. Also, I used some pretty good quality chocolate which made the batter dark. I was still hoping for red, so I added 1/2 bottle of liquid red food coloring.

For frosting, I winged it... 2 sticks of butter, some vanilla and enough powdered sugar to make it taste good. I added some flour and potato starch to make it thicker without making it sweeter and a pinch of cream of tartar to make it fluffy.

I was a little worried, but these taste really good! But they do taste beet-y, while the recipe said they would not. One person pointed out that if I used store bought beets instead of farmer's market beets the beet flavor would probably have been milder. I kind of liked the beet flavor, myself. Some people did, some didn't. You have to be prepared for it though, otherwise it would be a confusing flavor! With the exception of the one person who got a beet chunk, the texture of these was great! Definitely "velvet"!

--On a side note, I used some silicone heart shaped cupcake liners (it was for Valentine's Day aferall!) that my roommate bought for me. I love the idea of reusable liners, especially since I bake so much. But the cupcakes didn't come out super smoothly, just like in regular paper liners. I didn't grease the liners, maybe that is where I went wrong, but they didn't have any instructions! And cleaning them is a bitch because of the ribbed sides, so I have to soak them forever and then scrape the cake out. Just mentioning it!