Saturday, March 27, 2010

Guinness Chocolate Cupcakes

This update is a little slow in coming, but I was proud of the results so here's my contribution to the St. Patrick's Day festivities: Guinness chocolate cupcakes with Bailey's Irish cream frosting.

Guinness Chocolate Cupcake

I have wanted to use Guinness in a baking recipe for a couple of years, so when I saw this post from Le Petit Pierogi, I knew I had found my opportunity. She gives a good recipe on her page, so I won't bother to copy it here.

Christmas

For decorating, I must first ask a holiday riddle: what is Christmas without the red?

St. Paddy's Day

The answer is St. Patrick's Day! I received some Christmas-themed sprinkles around the holidays and I thought I could repurpose them. I plucked out the red sprinkles to make a topping appropriate for this holiday.

Guinness Cupcakes

The beer flavor mostly cooked out of the cupcakes. A couple people claimed they could taste it a bit, but for the most part the Guinness just accentuated the chocolate and kept the cakes moist. The frosting was a little more alcoholic. Even though only a few tablespoons of Irish cream go into the buttercream, the flavor is pretty intense. The pairing of chocolate and Irish cream, though, is marvelous. These little treats disappeared pretty quickly among my green-clad colleagues. So the next time you have a leftover stout, go ahead and throw it into a cake for a new Irish experience.

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