Irish Carbomb Cupcakes

I love seasonal baking.  I'm talking apple/cinnamon/pumpkin in the fall, peppermint and chocolate in the winter, citrus and fruit in the summer...but spring always has me caught.  My mind goes floral but I haven't gone much further than lavender (with my Almond Lemon lavender cupcakes).  March is the only springtime month that comes easy.  March means St. Patrick's Day, which means bringing out one of my favorites: Irish Carbomb Cupcakes!

My good friend Christina of All's Fare Food Blog shared my recipe with her readers last year, and I am excited to post it here today with new pictures.  These treats bring the flavors of one of my favorite "shots" (can you call it a shot?) together into a cupcake with Guinness Chocolate Cake, Jameson chocolate ganache filling and Bailey's Irish Cream frosting.

I got an early start this year and baked my first batch of these cupcakes in February to say thank you to my new coworkers.  I've recently started a new job, and I'm sure you all know how the first couple of months go.  There is a lot to learn and a lot of my new coworkers have been awesome helping me along the way so I thought they deserved some boozey-cupcakes.  They disappeared fast, good move by me!

Here is the recipe that I adapted from Smitten Kitchen, this makes about 2 dozen cupcakes - enjoy!

Need:

Guinness Chocolate Cupcakes:

• 1 c. Guinness (pour first to let it settle)
• 1 c. (2 sticks) unsalted butter - room temperature
• 3/4 c. unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 c. all-purpose flour
• 2 c. sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 2 large eggs
• 2/3 c. sour cream

Jameson Chocolate Ganache:

• 1 1/2 c. chocolate chips
• 2/3 c. heavy cream
• 2 tbsp. butter, room temperature
• 1 nip of Jameson Irish Whiskey

Bailey's Irish Cream Frosting (makes enough for 12...make two batches to have enough for all 24 cupcakes):

• 3 1/2 c. confectioner's sugar
• 1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 nip of Bailey's Irish Cream

Do: 

1) Make the cupcakes

• Preheat oven to 350F and prep cupcake pan with liners.  
• Bring 1 cup Guinness and 1 cup butter to a simmer in a heavy saucepan over medium heat.
• Add cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth.  Cool slightly.
• Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda and 3/4 tsp. salt in a large bowl to blend.
• Using an electric or stand mixer, beat eggs and sour cream in another large bowl until light and creamy. 
• Pour Guinness/chocolate mixture into the egg/sour cream bowl and beat to combine. 
• Add flour mixture and beat for about 1 minute on low.
• Using a rubber spatula, fold batter until completely combined.  Be gentle, but make sure everything is well-mixed. 
• Divide batter among cupcake liners, and bake for about 17 minutes or until a cake tester (toothpick in my case!) comes out clean.  
• Cool cupcakes completely on a wire rack. 

2.  Make ganache (you can start this while the cupcakes are cooling)

• Pour chocolate chips into a heat-proof bowl.  
• Heat the cream in a separate pot until it simmers, then pour over the chocolate.
• Let the cream sit on the chocolate for 1 minute, and then stir until smooth.  If the chocolate has not melted enough to stir it smooth, you can pop it in the microwave for 10-20 seconds and stir again.
• Add the butter and whiskey, and stir until combined. 
• Let the ganache cool until it thickens up a bit.  I put mine in the fridge for about 40 minutes and stir once every 10 minutes per Smitten's suggestion.

3.  Fill the cupcakes

• Use a cupcake corer ($5 at Williams-Sonoma), apple corer, wide piping tip, 1-inch cookie cutter, knife, whatever you have on hand to cut the centers out of the cooled cupcakes.
• Save your centers to make a tastie! (A tastie is what I call a small bite of your cake that you can dab frosting on to make sure it tastes good without eating a whole cupcake)
• Give the ganache one last good stir, fill a piping bag or ziplock baggie and cut off a corner, and squeeze the ganache into each cupcake.  It's okay if it is a little over-filled, people will love it and you can cover it with frosting later.

4.  Make the frosting

• Whip the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer for several minutes.  You want it really light and fluffy, I like to use the whisk attachment for this.
• Once the butter is whipped, slowly add your powdered sugar, a few tablespoons at a time.
• When the frosting looks thick enough to spread, add in the Bailey's and an extra splash of Jameson if you have extra for good measure, and whip until combined.
• You can add more sugar or more liquid (milk, or booze, either one!) to thicken or thin out the frosting.

5.  Decorate!  Now you're ready to frost your cupcakes any way you like.  Enjoy!

Here's one of my tasties; a cupcake core, a dab of ganache and a dot of frosting- delish!

Here are my cupcakes all filled, pre-frosting

Almond-Lemon-Lavender Cupcakes

It feels like Christmas Eve...except its Cupcake Camp Eve!! I just finished up my cupcakes for tomorrow and I am psyched!

My friend Christina of All's Fare Food Blog & I will be joining the ranks of amateur bakers for tomorrow night's cupcake fiesta.  She put together some super cute Red Velvet Baseball cupcakes (hopefully they'll be good luck to our Sox) and I just finished up my Almond-Lemon-Lavender cupcakes.  They are a heavy white almond cake, with lemon curd filling and topped with some homemade lavender buttercream.  Perfect for spring, right?

I have to say, this is one of the messiest cake recipes I've followed yet!  To be fair I was kind of rushing the fun part so I could make it to my girls night dinner on time, but sheesh, next time I will be sure to use my splatter guard on the KitchenAid and stir slowly with a nice big spatula!

The batter comes together very thick, and bakes into a fairly dense, but still moist cake.  I was initially concerned that the eggs whites were too prominent in the cake, based off of my miniscule toothpick test to make sure they were done. 

So I went to town with my new cupcake corer and tried a "tastie" as my hubs and I are calling them, which made me confident that the over-eggy-ness was just my paranoid imagination.  This cupcake corer is amazing...and affordable.  Only $5.00 at Williams-Sonoma!  Highly recommend if you like to fill your cupcakes.

To make sure I'd be brining something worth sharing, I topped some tasties with a dollop of lemon curd and a dot of lavender buttercream.  So good, and a great way to keep me from "testing" a whole cupcake at 11PM!

I definitely had a blast making these for tomorrow night and my husband can't get enough of the lavender buttercream.  You know it's good when your sweetie goes back for seconds, thirds, fourths... Do you have a recipe that is a super hit? 

Also- for anyone who made it this far, were you at Cupcake Camp too? Let's trade notes!

White Almond Cake (adapted from Martha Stewart's white cupcake recipe)

Need:

• 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1 tablespoon pure almond extract
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (2 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 2 1/4 cups sugar
• 7 large egg whites

Do:

• Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line cupcake or muffin tins with papers; set aside.
• Stir together flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.
• Mix milk & almond extract together (Martha suggests a glass measuring cup...I used a plastic measuring cup and it was fine.)  Once mixed, set aside. 
• Place butter in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, and beat until pale and creamy. With the mixer on medium speed, gradually add sugar in a steady stream; continue beating until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Reduce speed to low.
• Add flour mixture to butter and sugar bowl in three batches, alternating with the milk/almond liquid, and starting and ending with the flour. Do not overbeat. **This is serious!  Mine got TOO thick...I highly suggest stopping beating as soon as your final batch of flour is completely mixed in.**
• Wash out your electric mixing bowl really well- make sure there is NO butter left anywhere!  Put on your whisk attachment, and beat egg whites on medium-high speed until stiff peaks form.
• Take one third of the egg whites and fold into the batter.  This should help lighten it up a little bit. Fold in the remaining egg whites in two batches, and be gentle!  This is where it can get messy, and you also don't want to flatten your eggs.
• Pour batter into prepared tins, filling cups to about 1/2 inch from the tops. Bake until a cake tester inserted near the centers comes out clean and the tops spring back when pressed lightly in the center, 18 to 20 minutes. Remove from oven; let cool completely before removing the cores.
• Once cooled and cored pipe in lemon curd filling.  You can make your own, but I used Dickinson's brand from Stop & Shop.

Lavender infused buttercream:

Need:

• 1/4 c. water
• 2 tbsp. dried lavendar
• 2 sticks of room-temp butter
• 1/2 c. vegetable shortening
• 2 tbsp. milk (i used skim)
• appx. 5-6 cups confectioner's sugar
• food coloring

Do:

• In a small saucepan or microwaveable bowl, heat water to boiling.  Add in dried lavender and let simmer for a good 15-20 min or so. 
• Strain lavender water into another bowl, removing the lavender and leaving just the hot infused water.  Put the water in the fridge for another 20 minutes+ to cool.
• Beat the butter and shortening together until nice and light.  
• Beat in milk then add confectioner's sugar 1 cup at a time until it comes together into a nice buttercream.  You may need to add a splash of milk or more sugar to reach your desired consistency.  I always eyeball my buttercreams and never keep track of how much sugar I actually end up using.  The key is to watch the consistency and TASTE! 
• Once you like how it's looking, add in your cooled lavender water and food coloring.  To make the pretty purple color in mine, I used probably 16 drops of blue, 8 drops of red...and then 1/4 teaspoon of violet gel color too.  The drops were just creating a not-so-pretty greyish color, and then when I added the violet gel it finally turned the pretty purple I was hoping for.   Mix your buttercream until all of the infused water and color is combined.  Give it a taste, make sure it feels right to decorate with (not too smooth, not too stiff) and either use immediately or save in an air-tight container for up to one week.