Rachel had a birthday the other day, and in Clover tradition we made her cupcakes. Whenever an employee has a birthday his/ her boss makes cupcakes. We don’t make a batch or two, but hundreds, and we give them away to customers to celebrate.

Rachel is an Assistant Manager at our Harvard Square restaurant. But she sort of works directly for me because she’s the first ever Manager in Training at Clover.

So when I saw it was her birthday I had to start thinking about cupcakes. I know Rachel’s eyes always light up when she’s talking about hoppy-IPAs. So I thought hops. Rolando had this great idea to do a whipped cream frosting and infuse the cream with hops. I stopped by our local home-brew shop and picked up some hops.

I’d say the cupcakes were awesome (thanks Joe for your help with those), the hoppy topping was super hoppy, but maybe way too strong. I think next time I’d use 1 oz or less/ 4 quarts of cream. It was a really fun experiment, if less than a total success. Rachel — remember it’s the idea that counts, right : )