Imperial Stout Chocolate & Raspberry Beer Cream Whoopie Pies

Ingredients

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Directions

1. Raspberry Beer Cream
2. Make sure the butter and the cream cheese are softened and room temperature. If the butter is not super soft, put it in a large Zip Loc baggie. Then, give it a bunch of whacks with a meat tenderizer. Do the same with the cream cheese, if necessary.
3. Then, in a large bowl, cream the butter and the cream cheese together with a hand mixer on medium speed until combined and fluffy.
4. Sift in 3 cups of the confectioners sugar, one cup at a time, mixing after each addition with the beaters.
5. Then, add the raspberry jam and the fruit beer. Mix until combined.
6. Sift in the remaining 1/2 cup of confectioners sugar and beat with the mixers until combined. It will have a dull pink-grayish hue. Feel free to add food coloring to your desired color. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.
7. Whoopie Pies
8. Preheat the oven to 350˚F.
9. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
10. In a large bowl, mix together the cocoa powder and the beer. It'll do some weird stuff at first. Just keep stirring and it'll eventually turn into a liquid.
11. Mix the vegetable oil and the brown sugar together in a bowl until well-combined. Add this to the cocoa powder/beer mixture.
12. Add in the espresso powder, egg, vanilla extract and buttermilk. Stir until well-combined.
13. Slowly add in the flour, making sure to scrape down the sides. Stir until all the ingredients are incorporated and you have a batter just shy of the consistency of Playdough. Set aside for 10 minutes or so so it'll be a little easier to work with.
14. Line some baking trays with parchment paper. I traced a heart-shaped cookie cutter and manipulated the batter by hand to fit into the shapes. You can just drop it on in circles, if you like. I used an ice cream scoop to portion out the pies.
15. Bake for 12 minutes or until the tops are dry and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
16. Let them sit on the baking tray for a couple minutes and then carefully peel them off the parchment paper and put them on a cooling rack.
17. While the pies are cooling, take the beer cream out of the refrigerator and let it come up to room temperature.
18. Once the pies are completely cooled, spread about 2 teaspoons of the beer cream on one of the pies. Top it off with its other half (how cute, for Valentine's Day.) Set aside and let the glaze harden. If you have extra glaze, drizzle some on top of the pies.