Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes with Bailey’s Cream Cheese Frosting

*I was trying to wait until tomorrow to post this, but I’m just too excited about them*

Today while I was at work I got the sudden desire to bake tonight 😛
This past week at Frostings they had a St. Patrick’s Day special cupcake – Irish Car Bomb!; which is a “Guinness-infused chocolate cake, topped with a Bailey’s Irish Cream Buttercream and a shamrock.” Since I didn’t get a chance to stop by to try it I figured I would try and find a recipe. After looking around at several recipes I came up with one combining the recipes I found.  I also did a cream cheese frosting since I’m not really a huge fan of buttercream 🙂

Guinness Chocolate Cupcake with Bailey's Cream Cheese Frosting

These are some of the best cupcakes I’ve ever made/eaten!  Contrary to what you may think you don’t really taste the Guinness; more so, it enhances the chocolate and really compliments the Bailey’s Frosting… kind of hard to describe.

For my recipe…

Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes
Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter
• 12 oz (1 bottle) Guinness beer
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 3/4 cup cocoa powder
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup  white sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 2/3 cup sour cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a sauce pan heat up better, Guinness… use low heat as you don’t need it to boil, just enough to melt the butter.  Next dissolve the brown sugar and cocoa powder, once combined remove from heat and set aside.  In a large bowl (stand mixer would be ideal, but I only had a hand-held mixer) combine the rest of the dry ingredients: flour, salt, white sugar, baking soda.  Pour in cooled Guinness mixture and begin mixing.  Add the eggs, vanilla, and sour cream.  Mix until well combined and smooth.  Fill cupcakes about 2/3 full, these cupcakes don’t rise too much so it’s okay if you overfill a little.  Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.  Cool before frosting.

Cupcakes cooling

These cupcakes are pretty good by themselves; very moist due to the sour cream.  But adding the Bailey’s frosting really puts it over the top, it brings out the flavor of the cupcakes.

Bailey’s Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients:

• 4 oz cream cheese
• 1 cup confectioner’s sugar
• 3 tablespoons Bailey’s Irish Cream
• Heavy cream, optional

Simply combine all the ingredients.  The heavy cream, or in my case whipping cream, makes the frosting very creamy; you only need to add a splash of it if you like thinner, creamier frosting.  If you like a thicker cream cheese frosting then leave the heavy cream out 🙂
I put my frosting in the fridge while the cupcakes were cooling in order to firm it up a little.

If you wanted to be festive you could always add some green sprinkles 😛