Beer + Cupcakes = Beercakes?

Second post in one week?! Craziness, I know! But I thought I'd give an update on what I've been working on lately at home while in between job searching! Even though my baking career at Zooies ended I've still playing around with pastries in my spare time. I've been trying to learn new techniques and recipes, while coming up with my own ideas as well. There's this semi-new concept arising in the food/alcohol industries called beer and cupcake pairings. Bars or breweries will host events where local bakeries or independent pastry chefs can bring their cupcakes (or sometimes donuts!) in and pair them with certain beers so that the cupcakes and beers compliment one another in flavoring. It seemed like a really fun concept, but as I continued to do research I found a few people were even beginning to take it a step further and infuse the actual cupcakes with beer. This obviously sounded super delicious so immediately I was interested in trying it out for myself! I brainstormed and researched different flavor pairings and came up with two cupcakes, one being a spiced cupcake and the other a double chocolate cupcake...yuuuum.

With a spiced cupcake being lighter, I figured a lighter beer would be a good choice. So you can guess that for a chocolate cupcake a darker beer would probably fit nicely :) I got to work finding recipes and beers and came up with these the first time around:

(Spiced cupcake with Samuel Smith's pale ale and a whipped cream cheese frosting)

(Double chocolate cupcake with Samuel Smith's oatmeal stout and a chocolate cream cheese frosting)

They were a hit with my friends and family so my boyfriend Gabe told me about this brewing company called, Intergalactic Brewing Co.,  he'd met at a beerfest recently and how the owner was interested in doing beer and cupcake pairing events at his brewery. We decided to venture up there, try some beers and hopefully bring some home to infuse into the cupcakes. Well let me tell you, their beers are quite delicious and it was really easy to find a couple winners that would pair amazingly with my cupcakes! The next day I whipped up a couple batches using the same cupcake recipes, just switching out the beers and here are the final results: 

They came out better than the first round did (taste and presentation haha) so Gabe and I took these bad boys up to Intergalactic, sat down with the owner and had him try these along with the beers that were infused in the cupcakes and to my surprise he loved them! He liked the concept and product enough that we already booked an event with them to have a beer/cupcake tasting night using MY cupcakes!!! Yay!! I'm so excited for this opportunity and very nervous too!

So if anyone reads this post...come out to Intergalactic Brewing Company on Friday September 19th from 6pm to 9pm and try these for yourself along with some delicious beer! You know you want to...(:

I'm off to go practice my piping skills...because these cupcakes better look beeeeautiful for their formal debut to the public! ;)