Don't Forget the Beer

When you cook or bake or write, here's an ingredient you might want to keep in mind. . . BEER!

Beer is the "adventure" ingredient that helped Elaine Barbee from St. Charles, Missouri, win $10,000 in a national cupcake baking contest. According to an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Barbee used stout beer to make her "You Make Me Want to Stout" chocolate cupcakes. Here's a link to her prize winning recipe.

Reading the article reminded me of my prize-winning recipe.

Being from St. Louis, the home of "the King of Beers," it's not unusual to use beer in the kitchen--not just for drinking or rinsing your hair--but also in recipes.

About ten years ago I entered a national chili recipe contest. The judging criteria weighed heavily on creativity, so I got creative. When thinking about chili, an image of the desert Southwest usually comes to mind, so I went in a different direction.

I concocted a recipe in homage to my home of birth (St. Louis) and my husband Walt's Bavarian roots. The recipe I created and submitted in hopes of winning a truck for my husband was "Walt's Bavarian Chili." Ingredients included potatoes, sauerkraut--and you guessed it--beer. In this case (make that a can) it was locally brewed Busch Bavarian beer.

"Walt's Bavarian Chili" didn't win the grand prize of a Ford F-150 4x4 shiny red pick-up truck, but it did win a first prize, which took a truck to deliver.

When the delivery truck showed up in our driveway, Walt and the driver needed a dolly and strong backs to unload the prizes, which filled up about a quarter of our garage.

Prizes included a state-of-the-art Weber barbeque grill and utensils, a portable stereo system with a dozen CDs, an apron and a hot pad, a cast-iron dutch oven, chili pepper and little pink piggie lights, boxes of hot sauce, chili seasoning and hot peppers, a dozen ceramic chili bowls and ceramic cups, two boxes of matching silverware sets, a gift certificate for Omaha steaks to be delivered to our door, and several other items I can't remember.

Wow! Hot exciting. Our excitement was tempered a bit the following January when our 1099 arrived and we had to pay taxes on almost $3,000 for the value of the prizes. Still it was fun, and the non-perishable prizes lasted for years and years.

So, if you're thinking about being creative in cooking or baking or writing--don't forget the beer!