So, here is the recipe for my Cupcake Camp Seattle submission. Some of the ingredients are a bit on the weird side, but not impossible to duplicate with “close enough” items from your local grocery store. To explain the brewing process: aside from water, the ingredients of beer are hops, malted barley, and “specialty grains.” You add these things at various stages in the boil, then cool it and add yeast, then let the yeast eat those sugars and leave lovely alcohol in their wake. Specialty grain is just varying grains, but usually mostly more malted barley, that you steep (like tea) to add special flavors to the beer. You add roasted malt to porters and stouts, which is why they have notes of chocolate and coffee, it’s the same roasted taste. The main cake recipe involves these grains. For the filling, I actually found malted barley syrup (similar to what’s used in brewing) in the sweetener section of my grocery store. It tastes a lot like caramel…well, caramel and plain ovaltine. Which, if you can’t find malted barley syrup, is what I recommend you use. Lastly, hops are an intensely flavorful flower, associated with the bitter taste in beer. For the frosting, I recommend sticking with IPA because it’s so hoppy. Frankly, while my hubby loves the stuff, it’s normally way too hoppy for me. But with all the other sweetness surrounding it, it just gives a nice floral twist to the frosting that’s really, really nice. When you use the beer, you can choose to boil it, if you want to reduce the alcohol content and/or make the beer taste stronger, but it isn’t necessary, and even helps add fluff to the glaze.

As far as decorating, I baked these guys in straight-walled shot glasses. With the color of the cupcake and the semi-liquid consistency of the frosting/glaze, it makes it look just like a pint of your favorite ale with a frosty head on it…only tinier. And less frosty, more frosting. On the side, I used melted chocolate to make logos of our favorite local microbrews on the glass. If you want to go this route, remember to grease the shot glasses before adding the batter, thoroughly wiping off the outside before decorating, and when serving them provide something to get the cupcakes out (I used wee bamboo forks, used for serving appetizers).

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