Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

Cady, Rachel, and I made the Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes again this year for St. Patrick's Day.  I realized that while I've posted about them two years in a row, I didn't include the actual recipe from The Culinary Chronicles.

Cupcakes:

• 1 cup stout beer
• 1 cup unsalted butter
• ¾ cup quality unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 ¾ cups granulated sugar
• 1½  teaspoons baking soda
• ¾ teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs
• ⅔ cup non-fat yogurt

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line cupcake cups with paper liners.  

Put the butter with the stout beer in a sauce pan over medium heat and bring to a simmer. Whisk in cocoa powder until smooth. Cool slightly.

In a large bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt. In a mixer bowl, beat the eggs and the sour cream together. Add the beer/butter/cocoa mixture and beat to combine. Add the flour mixture and beat briefly just to combine. Using a rubber spatula, fold the batter until completely combined, making sure to incorporate little pockets of flour on the bottom so that the batter is of equal consistency everywhere.

Fill the cupcake liners about 2/3 of the way if you want flatter cupcakes and 3/4 if you want domed. Bake for about 17 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of a cupcake comes out clean. Cool completely to room temperature.

Frosting:

• 4 to 5 cups confections sugar
• 2 cups unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 4 to 5 tablespoons Irish cream liqueur

In a large mixer bowl, whip the butter for several minutes until very light and fluffy. Slowly add about half of the powdered sugar a few spoonfuls at a time until incorporated. Slowly drizzle the Irish Cream and whip until combined. Add the rest of the powdered sugar until your desired consistency has been achieved.

Fill a pastry bag and pipe buttercream on top of cooled cupcakes. Garnish with sprinkles or other adornments. Enjoy!  (This makes a lot of buttercream so that you can pipe large mounds on the cupcakes. If you prefer less on your cuppies, halve the amounts.)

We made a few changes to the recipe, using a little less sugar and substituting the sour cream for non-fat yogurt.  I also made a huge mistake this year, adding twice as much butter than the recipe called for.  (I don't know what I was thinking.)  So the cupcakes were really moist and fell apart easily, but they were also really greasy on the bottom.  They were still delicious, but that's not the healthiest mistake to make!  Most people would use Guinness and Bailey's for the beer and liquor, but we used Milk Stout Nitro from Left Hand, a Colorado brewery that actually replaced Guinness after there was a shortage, in huge markets like Chicago!

I've seen some recipes with variations like a whiskey ganache, but around here, we like this one!  Enjoy!