Saturday was a crafty and foodie day for me. Since it was St. Patrick's Day, I decided that I was going to try out a new recipe for
Guinness Chocolate cupcakes with Bailey's cream cheese icing. I have also seen these nicknamed after the drink the "Irish Car bomb", and for those of you who don't know what that is; it is a shot of Bailey's dropped into a Guinness.
I found the recipe to be easy to follow and I had most of the ingredients on hand. I pretty much just had to buy the Guinness and the cream cheese. I also substituted regular cocoa powder for the dutch process and I still came away with a lovely cake.
The cake it made was very moist and rich. You could hardly tell that there was beer in it as it complimented the chocolate so well. I recommend that you turn the pans half way through cooking, but be very gentle. Since this makes such a moist cake the centers are very fragile and the batter will escape out onto the tray if you aren't careful.
I made the icing pretty boozy as I used the full 6 tablespoons that the recipe called for. You can scale this to how much or how little you want. This is really the only part of the recipe that retains the alcohol as the Guinness's will be baked out. So if you want to eliminate any alcohol, just skip the Bailey's. I also found the icing to be a touch on the sweet side. I think if I were to make this recipe again, I would cut back a little bit on the icing sugar.
To serve them, I piped the icing onto the cooled cupcakes using the tried and true Ziploc bag method. Everyone seemed happy with them and I have lots of leftovers. So this recipe was a win-win! I could see this recipe also making a really nice cake, so I will keep that in mind when my hubby's birthday comes around.
