"O' cupcake, my cupcake"

First of all, I must give kitchen cred where kitchen cred is due: 1. Jess, the BFF, who bought me a kitchen aid stand mixer for my bridal shower. Without this, nothing baked is possible; 2. Eliza, who first turned me on to this recipe, and 3. the woman who writes "smitten kitchen," (recipe and directions for making)who presumably dreamed up this dream of a treat.

I must provide some context here, as I'm not a huge chocolate or a huge cake fan. I am also not much of a baker. That cred, incidentally, goes to my mom who has a true talent for baking. She could, and probably should, open her own pastry place. She'd make a killing and we'd all develop type II diabetes while living in a state of perpetual peanut-butter-blossom-cookie bliss. I digress... I am, however, a HUGE fan of Irish Car Bombs. It's a new years tradition in these parts, and once a year I forgo all sensibility in favour of chugging guiness, whiskey, and baileys until I start saying things that I...well, shan't repeat here.

So. Why the cupcakes? Why now, you ask? Well, Eliza posted these and I've been dying to try them. A year ago I had my first stint with lemon chiffon cupcakes, made for Jake's 30th birthday party and showcased by Alton, and they were pretty good. The downfall is that the 'chiffon,' or egg part is egg whites whipped into stiff peaks and added to the mix to make the cups light and 'chiffony'. This was a downfall because I didn't yet have the stand mixer and spent 45 minutes furiously hand-whipping egg whites while early-arriving guests watched me gasp and whisk and whisk and talk for an inordinate amount of time until I had moderately stuff peaks. Phew.

Truthfully, today is like a perfect storm of cupcakery (a word?). I've got the mixer, the Irish car bomb recipe love, and tomorrow night we head to an engagement party of two people who will marry in Ireland. What could be a better gift than these cupcakes (and a nice bottle of red wine)?!?!

Nerviously, I begin. Within 5 minutes there is flower EVERYWHERE. This is typical of me on the infrequent occasion of me baking. Literally, I do this like four times a year, max. Despite the messiness, it goes well. Shown here: left, the batter, ready to pour. Right, beer, butter and cocoa powder...mmmm...

Notes on the process: I used a porter instead of guiness stout. This is mainly because in PA you have to buy a case of beer from the distributor, so we got a mixed six from our local bar instead. The stout they had was strongly flavored with licorice, so we went with the porter. It had a nice chocolaty flavor, which complimented the batter well. I also added a touch of vanilla, perhaps a tsp or so. Ina Garten, one of my favorites, always tells me that vanilla actually brings out the flavor of the chocolate so I added it in keeping with that vein (kind of like an opposites attract kind of thing I guess?). I thought it improved and mellowed the flavor of the porter nicely.

As an aside, my dog, who is a doll but also crazy didn't like our first stint with the mixer, and she doth protest too much...

The ganache filling was my first attempt at making a ganache, and I found it surprisingly easy; it was smooth, rich, and glossy.














I also found that chopping up 8oz of chocolate was a good stress reliever.

And the buttercream frosting...oh the buttercream, baileys, luscious frosting. OMG.

This recipie is heavenly.


Our test cupcake (shown here) proved to be everything we had dreamed of and more. It was rich, silky, sweet but not too-so, and chocolaty. Did I mention rich? Because I should put a disclaimer here that this recipe is moist and delish but richer than Donald Trump. It also took me over two hours from start to finish, so you really must be ready to commit. I recommend a cool, rainy Friday night and a couple of cold beers.

I hope you make this, as it is totally worth every bite. My only regret is that my pops wasn't here to taste this right out of the oven. Not to worry -- he's fine, just six hours away in NH and the biggest chocolate cake fiend I've ever known.

Final recommend: Irish car-bomb cupcakes with an ice cold glass of water followed by an actual Irish car bomb. Cheers.