Luck of the Irish!

Every year, on this day, I make my most famous cupcakes: Chocolate Stout. If I had a signature cupcake, this would be it. I make them for St. Patrick's Day, for birthdays, for weddings, for whatever! It's a rich chocolate cupcake made with stout beer, in this case, Guinness Extra Stout. They're topped with a Bailey's Irish Cream frosting. The combo of flavors is phenomenal!

I make the same recipe every year, I've had it for longer than I can remember. But I'm interested to try different versions. Nigella Lawson has a chocolate Guinness recipe, and Robicelli's has a car bomb recipe that I've wanted to try ever since I got their cookbook a few months ago.

Every time I make them, I try to present them a little differently. Green cupcake wrappers, green frosting, or even green shamrock sprinkles! This year I went with green wrappers and gold sprinkles, just like the gold at the end of the rainbow guarded by a leprechaun. Maybe these cupcakes should be at the end of the rainbow instead!

St. Patrick's Day cupcakes

Once again, as is my yearly tradition, I made chocolate-Guinness cupcakes with Bailey's buttercream. This recipe is such a crowd-pleaser, I can't NOT make it every year :)

I just love the way these smell while baking, the slight beer aroma is so tempting! There was one small change to this recipe, as I couldn't find a mini bottle of plain Bailey's. A huge liquor store didn't have mini bottles, only regular sized ones, and I'm not buying a huge bottle when I only need 3-4 tbsp. So instead I got caramel Bailey's. I figured the slight caramel flavor would go well with the chocolate in the cupcake.


I also got to use my new green glitter! It's edible glitter, just for cake decorating. So fun!


I had some leftover batter after making 2 dozen cupcakes, so I used my new Babycakes mini cupcake maker to make some minis! I got this awesome creation for Christmas and finally got around to using it. It's an electric appliance, just for making mini cupcakes! It was super easy to use, and the cupcakes baked in about 6-7 minutes. It's great for using a little bit of batter, instead of the mini cupcake tins that I have that make 24 at once. This makes only 8 at a time, but sometimes that's all you need!

Chocolate Stout and Baileys Cupcakes and Pops

Happy St Paddy's Day! As usual, I made my world famous chocolate Guinness and Baileys cupcakes. However, I also make them into cupcake pops! It was very time consuming, and I messed up a few things, but they turned out great, and delicious too!

For anyone who doesn't know what a cake pop is, it's crumbled up cake mixed with frosting, then dipped in chocolate and decorated. On a pop! I think this is a great use for leftover cake or cupcakes, since the frosting moistens them up again. The possibilities are endless for decorating, but this time I just kept it simple.
So, the challenges I had: I first bought green candy melts, melted them, all was good, but then I tried to be creative and add Jameson whiskey to them to add flavor. The entire mixture seized up, and no mount of re-melting would get it back to liquid state. So I had to go out to the store to get chocolate bark, except they didn't have any! Apparently, it's a seasonal item. So I tried a few different chocolate products, and they ended up working ok. So half the pops were white chocolate and half were milk chocolate.
I also need to improve my rolling technique. Most of the pops weren't perfect circles, but kind of lopsided ovals. I will definitely try these again.
Oh, and the cupcakes turned out great too :)