St. Patrick’s Day Irish Coffee Cupcakes

Since St. Patty’s Day is just around the corner I thought I’d bring back an oldie but a goodie. This cupcake has become quite the hit over the past year! Not just for St. Patrick’s Day, but for weddings, birthdays and tuesday afternoons. I will never tire of this wonderfully delicious recipe. Impress your friends this year with this heavenly irish treat. Last year I used a chocolate box cake, but since I’ve removed processed foods from my home, I’ve got a home made recipe for you this year! You can always use the box cake if you want. Enjoy!

If you’re using the cake mix here are some things I did to make it taste better. The cake mix called for 1 1/4 cups of water, plus oil and eggs. I swapped the water for the same amount of cold coffee. This isn’t all that noticeable in the final cupcake but it adds a richness to what can sometimes be a flat flavour in box cakes. I also swapped the oil for melted butter.

I added 1/2 a cup of mini chocolate chips which made the cake more chocolatey and who doesn’t like that? (You’re a ding-dong if you’re thinking either 1- “chocolatey isn’t a word” or 2- “I don’t like when cupcakes are more chocolatey”)

If you don’t want to use the Box Cake here’s my home-made recipe. This is a dense cake, a slightly bittersweet cake. It has a very “Irish” flavor. If you don’t care for that taste you could certainly substitute the Guinness for the same amount of milk, cream, or coffee.

Irish Coffee Cupcakes

Yields 24 Cupcakes.

Cake:

¾ cup unsweetened cocoa

2 cups sugar

2 cups all purpose flour

1 t baking soda

Pinch of salt

1 cup of room temperature Guinness Beer (Or coffee if you don’t want the beer)

1 stick of butter; melted

1 T vanilla extract

3 large eggs

¾ cup sour cream

Preheat oven to 350 and line two cupcake tins with paper liners.

In a large bowl or mixer, whisk together dry ingredients. In a separate bowl combine the room temperature Guinness, butter and vanilla extract, then beat in the eggs one at a time. If the Guinness is cold it will cause the melted butter to set up and your batter will be gritty. Mix in the sour cream until well incorporated. Beat in the dry ingredients a little at a time until well mixed. Be sure to scrape the bowl.

Using a ladle or a half cup measuring cup, fill the cupcake cups ¾ full. Bake for about 25 minutes or until the cupcakes are nicely risen, rounded, and a toothpick in one of the center cupcakes comes out clean. Set aside to cool before filling and frosting.

These cupcakes are filled with an amazing chocolate ganache that is ridiculously easy. Seriously, if you’re all “I can’t make that,” I would genuinely ridicule you.

All you have to do is pour 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips (the very same that we’ve already added to our cupcakes) into a pyrex measuring cup. Gently simmer 2/3 cup heavy cream 2 teaspoons of Bailey’s Irish cream on the stove or in the microwave. Don’t boil it or you will make the cream lumpy.

Now about the Bailey’s… you simply MUST use Bailey’s brand. I was once cheap and bought an off brand and I sorely regretted it. Bailey’s is the only Irish Cream that tastes good. Moral of the story: Don’t be cheap. P.S. Try drinking Bailey’s from a shoe… I hear its amazing.

Once your cream is hot, pour it over the chocolate and add 2 tbsp of butter. Stir for a few minutes until its all melted and mixed in, then let it cool until it thickens enough to pipe into your cupcakes. You don’t want it to be too liquidy or too hot. (I cheated and popped it in the fridge for a few minutes to cool it down and get it to a nice consistency.)

Here’s a simple trick for filling your piping bag. Fold the bag over a glass, and just pour your ganache right in.

The glass is also a nice place to rest your piping bag so all your ganache stays toward the tip.

Cut out little holes in your cupcakes using a long piping tip as a punch. If you blow gently through the other side the cake will pop out of the tip. Trust me, you’ll get annoyed trying to get that cake out of there afterward. These get thrown away anyway (or if you have an Adam, they will get eaten up!)

Now pump your cupcakes full of ganache!

For the buttercream I followed the Sprinkles recipe (which is my go-to buttercream recipe) but I doctored it up a little bit. I doubled it for 24 cupcakes and instead of milk I dissolved one individual sized packet of Nescafé instant coffee into 2 teaspoons of Bailey’s Irish Cream 2 teaspoons of vanilla (okay maybe I was a little heavy handed on the Bailey’s ) and whipped it into my frosting. This not only gave my frosting the delicious irish coffee kick I was going for, but it also ended up being the exact shade of creamy beige I wanted. Feel free to up the instant coffee amount if you want a stronger coffee flavour. It would taste great with more coffee, but I didn’t want to make it too strong for my guests. I would have used Starbucks Via, but its really PRICEY! It is tasty, but not for $10 for 12 packets. I remember having Nescafé in Paris and being surprised at how delicious it was (imagine going all the way to france to find a good cup of instant coffee!), plus its only $1.50 for a box of 8.

I learned this nifty trick on pinterest for filling a piping bag with buttercream.

I’ve been wanting to try it, and it actually really works!

Start by blopping some frosting on a sheet of plastic wrap.

Then roll the plastic wrap around the frosting and twist up the ends.

Slide the whole thing into your piping bag and feed through the tip (with the coupler on but without the piping tip yet).

Then just snip off the excess plastic tie up the bottom and you’re good to go.

When you’re done you can just pull out the empty plastic wrap and toss it. So easy!

DISCLAIMER: Like many things on the internet, this looked extremely easy but I somehow found a way to muck it up the first time. Fear not.

If you’ve tried this and failed…

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