A classic chocolate cake recipe gets a makeover with rich chocolate stout and easy chocolate buttercream frosting topped with flakey sea salt.
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Cupcaaaaaakes! My favorite. And beer! My other favorite.
I love adding chocolate stout to chocolate cupcakes. Adding Guinness to cupcakes is, like, a “thing” now, but why limit yourself to just one kind of beer? I love the depth of flavor that chocolate stout lends to the cupcakes – it doesn’t taste “beer-y,” but the stout enhances the chocolate flavor and it makes them just WHAM BAM DELICIOUS.
Yup. That’s a thing.
I adapted this cupcake recipe from my classic, go-to chocolate cake recipe, and I have to say, I don’t know if I’ll ever make this the old way again.
Food just tastes so much BETTER with beer in it. You know? Yeah. You know.
Does anyone else feel like they’re getting a sugar high just from looking at these pictures? Because I’m like…whoa. Sugar high.
But also, please pass me another cupcake.
- 1 cup chocolate stout (I used Fort Collins Brewery Chocolate Stout)
- ¾ cup dutch process cocoa
- ½ cup (1 stick) butter
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 eggs
- ½ tsp. salt
- 2 and ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp. baking soda
- 1 cup buttermilk (I use 2 Tbsp. apple cider + 1 cup regular milk to make my buttermilk)
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1 recipe chocolate buttercream frosting
- 2 Tbsp. kosher or large-flake salt
- In a small saucepan, melt butter. Add chocolate stout and bring mixture to a simmer.
- While stout and butter are heating up, beat sugar and eggs together. Add salt and flour and mix to combine (I use my stand mixer) - the mixture should be relatively dry and resemble coarse biscuit dough.
- Mix apple cider vinegar and milk together (or use 1 cup store-bought buttermilk). Add baking soda to buttermilk and stir to combine. If you use my buttermilk method, the mixture will foam up as the soda reacts with the vinegar.
- Stream buttermilk + baking soda mixture into batter and stir to combine. Be sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl if you are using a stand mixer to make sure everything gets incorporated.
- Add vanilla extract to batter and stir to combine.
- Once stout and butter mixture has come to a simmer, stir the cocoa into the hot liquid and whisk to work out any lumps. Remove mixture from heat and stream it slowly into batter, mixing as you go until everything is just combined. The batter will be thin - that's okay!
- Pour batter into standard sized cupcake liners.
- Bake at 375 for 15-20 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.
- Top with chocolate buttercream and a sprinkle of kosher salt. Serve immediately
Don't add salt to these cupcakes until you are ready to serve - if it sits too long, the salt flakes will dissolve into the frosting and - while you'll still be able to taste it - they won't be visible.
Rainey says
September 21, 2017 at 1:25 PMI just made a similar recipe with Guinness but I topped mine with chocolate buttercream drizzled with dark chocolate, salted caramel, pretzel pieces and sea salt.
I’m still in a coma… lol..
Jessie says
September 22, 2017 at 6:56 PMYum! I love it!
Trisha says
July 14, 2017 at 1:49 PMThese definitely create more than 24 cupcakes! I bake cupcakes as a side business, and my normal 12 cupcake batch is 1-1/2 cups of flour to 1 cup of liquid and 1 cup of sugar. You have double of all three, which means double the cupcakes. But they look delicious and I am going to use a local oatmeal stout beer to make these.
Taylor Putnam says
December 6, 2016 at 6:28 PMNot sure how I managed it, but I was able to get 30 cupcakes out of this recipe. It made me laugh in the end!
Jessie says
December 7, 2016 at 1:34 PMAwesome! Maybe you have magical cupcake powers? 😉
imen says
November 10, 2016 at 5:59 AMThis looks amazing and i really want to try it! can i replace the chocolate stout with something other than alcohool liquid, rose water for example ?
Jessie says
November 22, 2016 at 9:46 AMI haven’t cooked with rose water so I’m not sure how that would perform in this recipe. I’ve had good luck substituting coffee for the Chocolate Stout, though! Hope that helps!
Patty says
March 5, 2015 at 3:54 PMThese look really delicious! I may have missed it, I’m just wondering how many standard sized cupcakes does this recipe make?
Jessie says
April 2, 2015 at 3:40 PMIt makes 12-14 standard sized cupcakes!
Danielle says
September 8, 2014 at 12:49 PMJust wanted to say I made these and they were so amazing. I got so many compliments. Thank you for sharing your recipe!
Jessie says
September 11, 2014 at 9:50 AMI’m so happy to hear that! Thanks for letting me know how they turned out!
ben says
August 21, 2014 at 10:23 AMHi, thanks for your recipe, just a few questions… can I replace Apple cider vinegar with normal vinegar? And for the stout, can I replace with Guinness too? I don’t think I can find these ingredients in Malaysia… Sorry for my English… but I really want to try this.
Jessie says
August 21, 2014 at 10:56 AMYes, you can use white vinegar in place of apple cider vinegar. I like the taste of apple cider more, but plain vinegar works in a pinch. Also, you can absolutely use Guinness in this recipe – I do it all the time and love it! Good luck!
Vera Zecevic – Cupcakes Garden says
February 28, 2014 at 8:57 AMI’ve featured this recipe on my blog, hoping that you don’t mind, but if you do, please contact me and I’ll remove it. All the best.
Helen @ Scrummy Lane says
February 26, 2014 at 2:08 PMDefinitely pass me one of those cupcakes! Love the photos!
dina says
February 19, 2014 at 1:20 PMthese look delicious!
Kristan-the-broken-bread says
February 19, 2014 at 12:28 AMI TOTALLY agree about tossing some sweet stout into cupcakes. I actually just posted some stout cupcakes on my blog too. Great minds think alike 🙂 I like that you topped these guys off with chocolate buttercream, going to have to try that next time. great pictures by the way!!
Jessie says
February 26, 2014 at 5:50 PMThanks! Your stout cupcakes look beautiful – great minds DO think alike! 🙂
Queenie says
February 17, 2014 at 10:50 PMOh my! these look so GOOD. We don’t have the stout here in our area. The photo’s are awesome. Great job on baking these and photography.