I’ve made many a food for this blog before. I like to challenge myself beyond the printed recipe. And while I mostly lean on the savory side, I like to celebrate major milestones with a good dessert.

If you’re reading this today, that means I’ve successfully rambled behind the mic for a full year on the KGMI Morning News. That’s a lot of rambling.

To celebrate, I wanted to challenge myself by creating a dessert that featured a local libation that I cannot get enough of. I’m not kidding. Ask the folks at FrinGe– they know I’m a sucker for a good sour beer. I had a can of their “Project Stardust” sitting in the fridge for a bit and thought- can I make something with this?

I’m no stranger to cooking with beer. My first blog recipe was beer bread. I wanted to see if I could get raspberry notes in a cake through beer alone.

Here’s the recipe I used, if you’d like to recreate it.

The star of the show.

I had to resurrect and clean my hand mixer- can’t remember the last time I had to break that one out. It also took a minute to remember that the butter needed a bit more time to soften:

Turning up the mixer to high and letting the butter fly back into the bowl may have been more time consuming, but it was way more convenient (and entertaining).

Once the cream cheese and sugar came into play, things calmed down.

The beer was the last wet ingredient that went in the batter. Its natural reddish-pink hue definitely stood out from the rest of the ingredients:

It does appear to be foaming. I’m not sure what caused that reaction. Feel free to shoot me an email if you have a better understanding of this sort of science.

Good news: giving it one final mix blended everything together anyways. The batter smelled faintly of raspberries. This was a good sign.

I added the dry ingredients, greased and floured my pan, and put it all together.

I got this gem situated in the oven, letting it bake low and slow for over an hour.

I’ll say based on looks alone, it was definitely worth the wait.

As for the taste?

Things got interesting as soon as I took the first bite. It tasted a heck of a lot like sirnik. I knew that the combination of sour cream and cream cheese would create a similar flavor profile. Adding blueberries elevated it to the level of dessert deliciousness that I was looking for.

Unfortunately… even with all that in mind, there was no hint of “Project Stardust” to be found. I knew the vibrant color of the beer blended into the batter early on. But I had hoped that the notes of raspberries I could smell earlier would stick around in the final bites. I’ll have to try again with a different recipe. Maybe for one that specifically calls for a sour beer.