Chocolate Stout Cupcakes with Kahlua Cream Cheese Frosting

Divine. Decadent. Heavenly. These are just a few words to describe the cupcakes I'm about to share with you... These aren't my own words but words of my coworkers who indulged in these cupcakes today at work as we celebrated a coworker's birthday. I have to agree with the adjectives they chose to describe these though; they are pretty amazingly delicious if I do say so myself!

As you can tell from the title, these cupcakes contain two kinds of booze...beer and kahlua. :) Good stuff, I tell ya. I really think that the stout beer enhances the chocolate flavor of the cupcakes in this recipe. The cupcakes themselves are very moist, rich, flavorful, and all around super tasty. Although I don't think the flavor of the kahlua came through in the frosting as much as I would have hoped, I have to imagine that it enhanced the deliciousness of the frosting too. Bottom line...booze in baking = a good thing.

I actually blogged about these cupcakes not far after my blog came into existence; you can read that post (it's brief!) here. I wanted to share them again though because I used a different frosting recipe this time AND because my blog has evolved quite a bit and I believe this recipe definitely deserves a lot more attention than I gave it the first time around!!

So, once again, the recipe I followed is one from Dave Lieberman of the Food Network. Read all about it here! Reviewers of this recipe on the Food Network site give it 5 stars, and I know that my coworkers and I wholeheartedly agree with that rating. The recipe says it makes 24 cupcakes, but I actually made 24 regular cupcakes, 12 mini ones, AND a small heart shaped cake (4" wide or so) with this batter. It makes a lot, folks!! You'll notice that the recipe calls for sour cream, but I chose to use light vanilla-flavored yogurt. Also, another small change I made was adding about 1 cup of mini chocolate chips to the batter. I mean, why the heck not?

Although the recipe recommends using Guinness as the stout beer, I used a milk stout made by the microbrewery, Left Hand. Hey look - I'm even holding the beer in my left hand! Ha. I'm a dork.

This milk stout is a verrry good beer. It was a little difficult to pour it into the bowl and not drink it!!

Mmmmm, extra chocolate. :)

All baked and ready to be frosted!

I read several frosting recipes before deciding on the one I finally made. I have a bit of a problem when it comes to reading recipes and deciding on one to make... I spend a great deal of time perusing my cookbooks (I have a TON of them) and recipes online. I really enjoy reading recipes, but sometimes I spend too much time doing it because I just can't decide on what to make! Thanks to inspiration from a few different cupcake-themed cookbooks I have, here are the final ingredients I used for the frosting:

-1 stick real unsalted butter, softened

-8 oz. cream cheese (I used 1/3 less fat), softened

-2 to 2.5 cups powdered sugar, sifted

- approx. 2 to 3 Tbsp. vanilla flavored kahlua (I didn't measure it exactly; sorry!)

Beat butter and cream cheese with electric mixer; add in the powdered sugar and booze and continue to mix until everything is well-incorporated. Continue to add more powdered sugar, as needed, until the frosting reaches the desired consistency that you prefer! 

This frosting recipe made plenty to frost every last cupcake. And I still probably had 1/2 to 2/3 cup of frosting leftover. Looks like I'll have to find a use for that this weekend... Hmmmm, maybe use it as the filling for whoopie pies???

As you can see, I topped each cupcake off with a few mini chocolate chips as a "garnish." 

These cupcakes would actually be good for the upcoming holiday of St. Patrick's Day! The original recipe suggests using Guinness. If you used Guinness stout and tinted the frosting green with some food coloring, I think you'd be totally set for St. Patty's! ;-)

Here's a mini cupcake.... Delicious, I tell you!!

I actually had two other recipes I was intending to share with you in this post, but because these cupcakes got such rave reviews at work today, I decided to share this one sooner than later! Should you be curious, the current two recipes on deck are browned butter toffee bars and butternut squash mac n' cheese....  They'll be coming soon, I promise! Until then, go get yourself some stout beer and kahlua. Oh, and make these cupcakes with them. I suppose you could just drink them though. :-D

I also want to try a new St. Patty's recipe soon to share with you before the upcoming holiday. Maybe I can squeeze that in this weekend! In the meantime, you can read up on my traditional Irish soda bread from last year!