Cooking With Beer: 8 Recipes

An ice-cold lager or a dark stout can be for more than just drinking. Cooking with beer, especially around Saint Patrick's Day, (think stout cake and Guinness stew) is popular. There are many reasons why cooking and baking with beer is advantageous to your recipes. For one, beer contains hops and malt, adding flavor and a subtle sweetness to savory dishes. Also, the yeast in beer makes baked goods lighter. So, pop open a bottle and get cooking.

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With so many reasons to cook with beer, we decided it would be the ideal theme for this week's SWAT (Sharing With A Theme). We put the Culinary Content Network and our staff to the test to come up with recipes using beer and here are some of the highlights:

• Rebecca Turchan from A Dusting of Sugar admits she doesn't like the taste of beer, but loves it in baked goods. She shared with us her recipe for honey beer bread, which uses an amber ale. Turchan is a member of the Culinary Content Network.
• Julie Du Pont of Weekend Table shared with us her recipe for beer braised chicken tacos. Tacos and beer seem synonymous to us — and cooking the chicken with beer makes it that much better. Du Pont is a member of the Culinary Content Network.
• The winner this week is Christine Carlisle from Chew Nibble Nosh and her recipe for chocolate stout layer cake with Bailey's spiked cream cheese frosting. Just the name alone leaves us wanting a slice. Carlisle is a member of the Culinary Content Network.

All of the recipes featured can be made at home for about $30 or less, excluding the cost of small amounts of basic ingredients such as butter, oil, flour, sugar, salt, pepper, and other dried herbs and spices.

Emily Jacobs is the Recipe editor at The Daily Meal. Follow her on Twitter @EmilyRecipes.