Chocolate Guinness Stout Cupcakes

YAY! This month is Loose Cannon Studio's 3rd anniversary!
Can you believe it? Congratulations to Dev and Matt for the inception Nov. 2005 in our living room. "2 Guys and a Fax machine!"

I decided to make these cupcakes for the celebration!
(veering away from my stealth health streak, but hey, it's a special occasion and Dev and I didn't eat them all ourselves.

I have to say, I came across way too many variations of this recipe...
Cream the butter and sugar together OR
Melt the butter, take off the heat and add the Stout OR
Heat the butter and Stout together?
Granulated sugar only OR
Brown sugar only
Add oil, milk or molasses
Add 1 cup of stout OR 2 cups OR 1 bottle... and so on.
Oh well, This is what I ended up doing:

Preheat oven to 350F

Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes
12 oz CAN Guinness stout
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, melted
1 T vanilla
3 eggs
3/4 C plain yogurt
3/4 C unsweetened cocoa powder
2C granulated sugar
1/2C golden brown sugar
2 C all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt


Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat, adding Guinness Stout and bring to a simmer.


Reduce heat and add cocoa powder - whisk until smooth.
Remove from heat to cool.

In another bowl, mix together flour, sugars, baking soda and salt.


Beat eggs until thick until light in color – about 4 minutes on medium to high speed. Add yogurt and beat until combined.

While mixer is running, slowly add the chocolate-stout mixture to the egg mixture until combined.
Add the flour mixture and stir until well mixed.


Bake 12 minutes for minis
18 for full size

For the frosting:
1 8 oz. package cream cheese, softened
1 C heavy cream
confectioners' sugar

Beat cream cheese until fluffy. Slowly add cream and continue to beat until well combined. Add confectioner's sugar to taste - about one pound (half a bag)


End result:
Texture: moist!
Taste: Guinness was fairly subtle, but good. Honestly, it tasted a lot like Duncan Hines box cake mix to me. Does that mean Duncan hines tastes homemade, OR does this recipe taste like a box cake mix? Considering all the work, I wonder if I could've just added Stout to a box mix instead. BAH.