Friday, September 9, 2011

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale

For my very first blog entry I decided to make pumpkin cupcakes using Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale from Shipyard Brewing Company in Portland Maine with homemade cream cheese icing ( mmmmm..)

Thanks to the Harrisburg, PA "Flood of 2011", I decided to make these cupcakes because a) I was bored out of my mind and b) my fiance and beer blogger of Kupko's Mind Bottled so happened to have a few bottles of Pumpkinhead in our beer fridges (plural). ;-)


I first started off with the dry part of the ingredients:

2.5 cups of flour
8 tbsp of corn starch
2 tsp of pumpkin spice ( or just use your own mixture of nutmeg, ground ginger, cinnamon and ground cloves)
4 tsp of baking powder

Mix these ingredients together with a large wooden spoon or whisk and set aside.

*Preheat your oven to 350 degrees*

Next I worked on the wet part of the ingredients ( now this is where things get messy....):

2 sticks or 1/2 lb of butter (room temp)
2 cups of organic sugar or brown sugar ( my favorite brand is Florida Crystals)
1 cup of Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale
2.5 tsp of Pure Vanilla Extract
3 organic brown eggs

Blend the butter sugar first ( the best you can- it doesn't start to mix well until you add the other ingredients)
Next add the vanilla extract, eggs and SLOWLY add the ale.

I would definitely use a blender for this part. Once you get a well mixed mixture, add it to the dry ingredients and blend till it looks smooth.

Line your cupcake pan with cupcake liners. Add cupcake mix till each cupcake liner is 2/3 full.

Bake in the oven for 15-18 minutes

Meanwhile.....

For the icing I used the following:

1 stick of salted butter
6 oz of cream cheese
1 tsp of vanilla extract
1 tsp of cinnamon
2-3 cups of powdered sugar ( add to taste especially if you don't want it to be too sweet)

Blend together until you have a smooth icing mixture. Once the cupcakes are cool, add the icing and enjoy!