Beer Me... in cupcake form.

Had a crazy day and decided to make my friend dinner.  She said that I could bring over the stuff to make the cupcakes that I was thinking about earlier. She could help with them.  So I figured that since my new oven and I are still working out the kinks in our relationship (ie. i am still trying to figure out its temperature difference between the knob and the actual temp.) I thought it wasnt a bad idea.
I originally wanted to make vegan chocolate hazelnut cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World but have been hard pressed to find hazelnuts.  They arent in the grocery store or at Trader Joe's so I gave up* on that quest and decided to go with the Chocolate Stout cupcakes from the same book.

*Ok, I mostly gave up on that quest.  I decided to go to the Somis Nut House on my way to Camarillo to see what they had and I will post a blog on the adventure that ensued.

Clarifications and Modifications:
    The recipe didnt call for any specific stout so it really was up to me and the grocery store.  However, thanks to my new decision to like beer, manly dark beer, I had a bottle of Trader Joe's Oatmeal Stout in the fridge.  I used that for the recipe.
    I am working with a lady right now that has a corn allergy.  She has heard of the baking wonderland that is my kitchen and has asked on several occasions when I was going to make her something.  After looking into different recipes I knew that I couldnt make her vegan anything cause the butter alway has canola oil or natural flavor/color derived from corn.  This recipe however didnt call for butter.  It did call for the canola oil, but I simply substituted soybean (vegetable) oil.

Result:

    These cupcakes are really good.  They dont have any frosting, but before you freak out with thoughts of "Cupcakes need frosting! You cant call it a cupcake without frosting! I think you are making muffins and trying to trick me into eating them." know that they dont need it.  These have a crumb topping that ended up being all crunchy and delicious.  I added a little too much oil and the crumbs ended up being paste that i just globbed onto the tops before baking. They were delicious though.  Moist and light and not actually tasting of chocolate beer.