Oregon Love: Beer, Bears & Blackberries

I travel as much as possible and I tend to fall in love with the majority of places I visit. Oregon was no exception, somewhere between the cool, artsy vibe in Portland, the dramatic pacific coast, and the vistas from the Rogue river I fell for it hard. Sadly my affair only lasted a week before I had to return to real life. But of course I wanted to commemorate it in the kitchen, and chocolate-stout cupcakes with ganache and blackberries seemed appropriate. 

Everyone knows that Oregon has amazing craft beers and I certainly sampled a number of them. It turns out that stout beer is quite good in baking especially with strong flavors like chocolate. Blackberries seem to grow everywhere in western Oregon. It was fabulous to pick them for breakfast every morning. The bears seemed to have the same idea- and we saw quite a few of them on the hunt for the sweet, perfectly ripe berries. Lucky for us there were enough berries that we didn't need to compete with the bears for them. I hope to make it back to Oregon sooner than later, but in the meantime I'll just have a cupcake..

CHOCOLATE-STOUT CUPCAKES WITH BLACKBERRIES
 

Cupcakes
2 cups stout beer
2 cups (4 sticks) unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
4 cups all purpose flour
4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
4 large eggs
1 1/3 cups sour cream

Ganache
2 cups whipping cream
1 pound bittersweet (not unsweetened) or semisweet chocolate, chopped

For the cupcakes: Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter 2 muffin tins. Bring 2 cups stout and 2 cups butter to simmer in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.
Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt in large bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat eggs and sour cream in another large bowl to blend. Add stout-chocolate mixture to egg mixture and beat just to combine. Add flour mixture and beat briefly on slow speed. Using rubber spatula, fold batter until completely combined. Divide batter equally among prepared muffin tins. Bake cupcakes until tester inserted into center of cakes comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Cool 10 minutes. Turn cupcakes out onto rack and cool completely.

For the ganache: Bring cream to simmer in heavy medium saucepan. Remove from heat. Add the chopped chocolate and whisk until melted and smooth. Refrigerate until ganache is spreadable, stirring frequently, about 2 hours.
Cover the cupcakes with ganache and top with blackberries.

This recipe is based off of Epicurious's Chocolate Stout Cake recipe.