The idea to bake cupcakes with beer initially mystified Frank Manzi.
Forget about Manzi’s decades of baking experience – from working at the long-defunct John J. Nissen Backing Co. plant in Worcester to founding Francesco’s Italian Bakery, a Charlton institution now in its 30th year.
He simply would never have thought to mix beer into a cupcake batter.
“I told him to trust me,” said his daughter, Gianna Manzi, the executive pastry chef and manager of Francesco’s. You see, the beer cupcakes were her idea.
Manzi felt as though she should clarify, too, that she would use local beer from one of the world’s most popular breweries, Charlton’s own Tree House Brewing Co., for her cupcakes, not Budweiser, her father’s go-to.
Brushing off any skepticism, Frank did what he usually does these days with matters concerning his namesake business. “He said, ‘That's what I do: I trust you, and you figure it out. It ends up working out,’” Gianna Manzi recalled.
Francesco’s released its first batch of beer cupcakes for Father’s Day 2019. And, of course, they were a hit. Since then, the demand for beer cupcakes from the father-daughter bakery has only grown, the annual Father’s Day releases becoming something of a new family tradition.
Each year Gianna Manzi has tried to incorporate more breweries into the mix.
“I love going to the breweries and talking to the different brewers,” she said, adding, “It has been an awesome way to meet people in the community. All the brewers have thought it was a cool idea.”
This year, Manzi’s menu features four different breweries: Altruist Brewing Co. in Sturbridge, Oakholm Brewing Co. in Brookfield, Timberyard Brewing Co. in East Brookfield and Tree House. And she will bake her first hard cider cupcake, using bottles from West Brookfield’s Ragged Hill Cider Company, another father-daughter business.
Manzi, 25, who has worked at Francesco’s virtually all her life (she was featured in a Meet the Chef column in 2013), said her beer cupcakes draw inspiration from an old family recipe for beer bread.
“You just take a can of beer and four other ingredients, then put them together. It's the perfect little thing,” she said. “That's what led me to use beer in other recipes.”
The recipe for her89 beer cupcakes is as easy as swapping out the milk or water in the batter for beer, using anywhere from 16 to 20 cans per batch. More challenging is planning out how to take advantage of the flavors from the brews and enhance them with different cakes, frostings and curds – or vice versa.
When I think of dessert, my mind always goes to decadent stouts. But Manzi embraces all styles for her cupcakes.
Sunday’s six-pack of cupcakes, for example, has a blueberry cake baked with Altruist’s sour Berliner Weisse, “Pucker Face: Blueberry Hibiscus.” A filling of hibiscus lime curd plays off the beer’s tartness, and a topping of Italian cream both mellows the cupcake’s sharpness and adds sweetness. Manzi prefers margaritas to beer, but she loved the Altruist sour even before transforming it into a cupcake.
For the Oakholm cupcake, she found an unlikely pairing in chocolate cake and the noble hopped ale “Tractor Bier.” With the ale so light, Manzi could make the cupcake richer through a cookie-dough base and a chocolate and buttercream frosting.
Much like putting out beer-infused cupcakes, these collaborations would have been unheard of when Francesco’s opened in 1999. Small businesses were more insular then, and social media didn’t exist.
“We are in this cool era of small business, where there is so much support,” Gianna said. “Now, after COVID, we saw what happened, we all felt it, and people want to support each other. It's a beautiful thing. Running a small business is tough. We feel that across all industries.”
The Tree House cupcake typifies the small business community today. In true call-and-response fashion, Tree House brewed “Hello Again Central Mass,” an American IPA, and highlighted Francesco’s – along with several other local business – on a batch of the cans, then Manzi used the beer in a cupcake.
“How can I not use that?” she said of the IPA. “It was a little bit of a challenge. But I figured out something after a lot of taste testing.”
She went with a brown sugar-roasted pineapple cake, dipped in a strawberry glaze and topped with coconut butter cream, which paired perfectly with the tropical fruit flavors of Hello Again Central Mass.
Even her father, the traditionalist that he is, approved of that beer-cake combo.
“He's mainly a classic man and drinks his Bud Heavy, but he’ll try anything when I put it in front of him,” she said.
Orders for Francesco’s Father’s Day Flight of cupcakes – five enhanced with craft beer and one with cider – were only accepted until Thursday. Call the bakery at (508) 248-9900 if you want to check if there are any left, or if there are plans to make more. Each six-pack is $19.99.
For the full menu of cupcakes, visit www.facebook.com/FrancescosItalianBakery.
June 15, 2021 at 03:16AM
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The Next Draft: Crack open a six-pack of cupcakes this Father’s Day - Worcester Mag
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