Hefeweizen Cupcakes

Hefeweizen Cupcakes

My husband and I found ourselves with a lot of beer leftover from our reception, which was nearly a month ago. Rather than drinking all the beer (we did give a decent amount away to friends and family), I've been incorporating it into my cooking and baking with mixed results. My beer bread turned out delicious but my blueberry beer cinnamon rolls weren't very cinnamon roll-like. I managed to salvage my second attempt by turning them into a blueberry beer coffee cake. Today I decided to try hefeweizen beer cupcakes! I've made beer cupcakes before using stout and chocolate but not hefeweizen. There were a few recipes out there but I chose one from the Pyramid brewery since I had Pyramid hefeweizen.

I was pleasantly surprised with the cupcakes. They were very moist and only slightly sweet. I personally don't like the super sweet cupcakes or frosting. I didn't have any cardamon on hand so I substituted cinnamon in without any problems. I would definitely make these again with cardamon to see how different it tastes. As for the frosting, I ran out of lemons so I substituted with some orange zest. The recipe from Pyramid is below with my notes in blue.

Cupcake Ingredients
6 tbsp butter, melted
2 eggs, room temperature4 oz buttermilk6 oz Pyramid Hefeweizen2 tsp vanilla1 cup brown sugar2 cups flour1 tsp cardamom (didn't have cardamon but substituted cinnamon)1 tsp baking soda

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2) Melt butter and set aside to cool down.
3) Whisk together the eggs, buttermilk, beer, vanilla in one bowl, and mix together the sugar, flour, cardamom, and baking soda in another.
4) Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in two parts, using a mixer to combine. Add the melted butter and combine.
5) Pour batter into cupcake cups and bake for 18-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cool.

Lemon Cream Cheese Butter cream Ingredients
4 oz butter (room temp.)
4oz cream cheese (room temp.)
1 tsp lemon extract (didn't have lemon extract so I added ~1tbsp of orange juice and zest of 1 orange - husband said frosting slightly remind him of a creamsicle but thought it tasted ok with the cupcake)
3 cups powdered sugar (I probably used about 1-1/2 cups since I hate overly sweet frosting)
3 drops yellow food coloring (I skipped this since I used the orange zest)


1) Cream butter and cream cheese with mixer until smooth. Slowly add the powdered sugar about a ½ cup at a time. When mixed add flavor and food coloring.

I originally tried a citrus whipped cream topping but it was a bit too light for the cupcake.

Frosted with orange butter cream with bits of orange zest

Nice moist cupcake... would probably work as a layered cake