Cooking with Beer: Barley Wine Cupcakes

Snowed in and cabin fever approaching dangerously fast, I needed something to do before Lauren’s five-minute weather updates drove me to insanity (“It’s still snowing... It’s still snowing... It’s snowing a bit harder now... Oh, look at those icicles... Still snowing...”). I decided that I needed to occupy myself in the kitchen and to make it more interesting I tasked myself to cook with beer. A few inspiration-finding flicks through recipe books later and I was ready to bake some Barley Wine Cupcakes.

The idea was a combination of inspirations: rum and raisin, warming and rich winter beer, the rise in baking beer bloggers and brewers and the Hummingbird Bakery (who make cakes so good that I had one and immediately bought their cookery book). For the beer I chose Nils Oscar Barley Wine because it was pretty much all I had in the cupboard that would work... thankfully, it was the perfect choice given its raisin, booze and bread sweetness and a mellow green bitterness (I nearly used a bottle of BrewDog Paradox Isle of Arran and soaked the raisins in whisky, but then decided to use the Paradox elsewhere...). Something like Fuller’s Golden Pride or Robinson’s Old Tom would also work well.

Beer gets into the cakes in three ways: in the sponge, in the beer-soaked raisins and in the icing. It also leaves you half a glass, which is important. Drown a couple of handfuls of raisins in beer so that they are just submerged. Leave for around an hour and then drain well before adding to the cake mix. With the icing, just add it to loosen the mix and give a little extra beer kick.

The finished cakes were the best I’ve ever made, which is probably down to the Hummingbird recipe than the beer, but I think the beer still deserves credit. They are light and lovely with a delicious butter icing on top and loaded with little bursts of chewy-sweet raisin. The true test of a beer recipe is if Lauren (who hates the taste of beer) will eat it... she loved them. It’s easily adaptable to other beers, too, or you can leave out the raisins or replace them with something else (cherries, blueberries, chocolate). Stout (or, even better, imperial stout) is an ideal choice to use instead of barley wine and the recipe can be adapted to add cocoa; I’d like to try it with a sweetened cherry beer; a Belgian dubbel or quad would be good, I’m also tempted by a really fruity IPA but would want one that’s not too bitter.

Here’s the recipe, which is copied/adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook (makes 11/12):

Cupcakes

120g plain flour

140g caster sugar

1½ teaspoons baking powder

Pinch of salt

40g unsalted butter at room temp

20ml milk

100ml beer

1 egg

Drop vanilla extract

Two handfuls of beer-soaked raisins

Frosting

200g icing sugar

80g unsalted butter at room temp

25ml beer (maybe a little extra)

Drop vanilla extract

Oven to 170C. Mix the dry stuff with the butter in an electric mixer. Gradually pour in the milk and half the beer. Separately mix the egg, vanilla extract and the rest of the beer. Add this to the flour mixture and continue to beat together. Add the raisins, draining off the beer and discarding, and stir through. Spoon into baking cases until two-thirds full. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Once cooked, allow to cool before adding the frosting. To make the frosting, whisk (electrically, if possible) icing sugar and butter until well combined. Add vanilla extract and mix. Gradually add little splashes of the beer until the icing is the desired thickness (really thick) and then beat until light and fluffy, ‘at least 5 minutes’ the book says. Spread the icing on and EAT.

What other beer cakes could work?

This wasn’t all I made while snowed in and the rest of the time I was making Imperial Chilli which I’ll blog about soon... 

P.S. This is my 400th blog post! 

FABPOW! Kernel Export Stout and a Hummingbird Cupcake

Earlier in the day Lauren sent me a picture of herself eating just about the biggest piece of cake I’d ever seen, along with an excited message saying that she’d found the Hummingbird bakery. Of course, I quickly tapped my reply and told her to buy me something. When she got home, just as I was about to open a bottle of Kernel Export Stout, she pulled a cupcake from her bag and set it down excitedly on the table. “Oh-my-god-Mark-the-cakes-were-amaaaaaaazing!!!”

I opened the beer first. Based on a recipe from 1890, it’s 7.8%, dark and topped with the sort of foam you need a spoon to enjoy; it’s dark chocolate, coffee and cocoa with a little wisp of smoke; a full body, more dark chocolate, some distant fruity berries and dried fruit, an earthy-leathery depth and just a hint of smoke and salt. Delicious, interesting and different with each sip, it’s another great beer from Kernel (there's currently some available from Beermerchants who also have a jaw-dropping number of Mikkeller bottles).

The cake was top heavy with the kind of vanilla butter icing to make your knees go weak while the sponge was impossibly light and airy. Together the intense, dark flavours in the beer matched the icing with neither overpowering the other, while the fullness of the body made it work, lifting the sweet sponge and icing and giving it a chocolatey kick on the way down.

An impromptu FABPOW and this one taking two London craft products sold at the opposite edges of the city and putting them together in harmony. And it gives me an idea... what about a London Market Brewery which takes inspirations from what’s on the stalls, independent shops or uses leftover market ingredients. Maybe a collaboration with different stalls: so a cupcake beer or beer cupcakes with Hummingbird; a chocolate beer with a chocolate stall; fruit and veg beers; a beer to go with particular foods and jointly branded...

Beer and cake can be hard to get right but when you nail it it's brilliant. Carrot cake and US IPA is a winner, so is kriek and a gooey brownie and then a cupcake and a rich, deeply delicious stout. Any other beer and cake recommendations?

FABPOW! Chocolate Cupcakes and Chocolate Marble

I happened to have a half-finished glass of Chocolate Marble beside me as the little chewy, gooey chocolate mouthfuls of cupcake - baked by Dominic from Marble Brewery as a thank you and a gift to everyone who came to try their beer at Cask Pub and Kitchen last week - were passed around... and never wanting to let a potential FABPOW pass, I gulped them both down together.

Chocolate Marble is rich and roasty, 5.5%, packed with cocoa and coffee and a bang of hop and charry bitterness at the end and it was a marvel with the mini cake’s stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth sweetness, making the chocolate in both taste richer but retaining a deft lightness. Plus, pairing two things, both with chocolate in the title, is almost guaranteed to be a winner.

Sometimes food and beer matches are planned, some are complete chance – beer in one hand, food in the other, let’s see what happens – others work a little differently, like this one, where there’s a symbiotic link between the two and they work at a specific time and place. In this case it was beer and cupcake made from the same person, served in a pub with 10 Marble beers on cask where everyone is there to drink them and having a great time. This type of pairing is rare. It’s also powerful. It makes almost anything taste good with anything else because the senses are wrapped up with experience (likely a good experience, too). It’s not about finding perfect flavours to go together, perfect texture counterparts; it’s about the moment.

So, would I try this at home? Probably not (although it was a very good pairing) - unless I’m invited to Dom’s for tea and he decides to get baking again - but right there and then, in Cask, it was a Marbleous match!

The Marble event was excellent. All the beers were in good form and it was great to see 10 casks lined up in one place – as I was waiting to order my first pint/Pint my mouth was literally watering at the prospect. I think the Summer was the beer of the evening, although Pint came close, as did W90... and Dobber, and Beer 57 was also excellent... 

Carrot Cake and Beer

Cake and beer?! Cut the tomfoolery. Who wants a slice of cake with their beer? The two are so far opposed that it seems slightly ridiculous. You’ll want a cup a tea with that, you might shout. Well not me, naturally. I’ve made cupcakes with stout here and now I’m pairing beer with carrot cake, which is one of my favourite cakes ever, ever, ever.

I used to be all ‘eurgh’ about carrot cake during the years when I thought vegetables were evil (0 through 17, yeah honestly, even at 17 I didn’t like vegetables?!) but now it’s my birthday cake of choice. Last birthday I was eating it and had a beer on the go at the same time (I had a beer in my hand most of the day, naturally) and thought I’d see if it worked. And it was bloody amazing. I’ve been working on my cake recipe since (this is the best yet, all stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth gorgeous), trying it with a few different beers to see how it matches up and there are some great pairings.

The beer I had the first time up was Sam Smith’s Yorkshire Stingo. An 8% strong ale aged in oak. It’s rich and full flavoured, fruity and complex, chewy, full of toffee and roasted oranges and has a great creaminess from the barrel aging. And it just worked so well with the cake. My next experiment was with an IPA. BrewDog’s Chaos Theory stepped up (hence the bottle cap in the picture which came from this). The earthy spice and orange flavours in both the beer and the cake sing the same song while the big-hitting hops wipe the palate clear of all the thick cake texture. Awesome. Big, fresh and juicy IPAs, with lots of sweetness and lots of refreshing hops and their biting bitterness, are also brilliant. Ruination IPA should be great here or Meantime’s IPA, which would come from an earthier angle. I also think a decent barley wine would be great - Fuller’s Golden Pride, Sierra Nevada’s Bigfoot, Anchor’s Old Foghorn. And maybe some strong stouts too, stouts with notable hop presence - Great Divide’s Yeti or BrewDog’s Coffee Imperial Stout.

Here she is. My wicked carrot cake recipe, which is delicious with or without the icing and will last brilliantly for a few days.

• 300g grated carrots (about 4 really big ones)
• 150g dark sugar
• 150ml light/plain oil
• 200g plain flour
• 1 teaspoon each of bicarbonate of soda and baking powder
• ½ teaspoon each of nutmeg, ginger, turmeric and salt
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 3 eggs
• 100g chopped pineapple (tinned is fine)
• Zest of one orange and juice of half
  
  For the icing:
• 1 tub soft cream cheese
• Juice of half an orange and zest of a whole orange
• 50g icing sugar

Turn oven to 180C and butter a large cake tin. Mix all the dry ingredients together then add the eggs gradually. Stir in the grated carrot (squeeze out most of the liquid first) and pineapple and then add the oil and the fresh orange juice. Pour in to the cake tin and bake for around 60 minutes (or until a knife comes out ‘clean’ from the centre – it’s a very moist cake so just be patient and let it do its thing).

For the icing just mix all the ingredients together, adding more sugar if you want and then spread out over the top of the cooled cake. This is one juicy, moist and stodgy devil of a cake and I love it. And here’s something controversial… you don’t have to have it with a beer - I’m not completely beer-and-food-mental – a cup of tea really is a great choice too (I’m thinking we need a builders’ tea mild…).

Do you have any good cake and beer combos?