Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Top o' the mornin' to ya!

To celebrate the holiday, I thought a Guinness cupcake, frosted two ways, would be the perfect choice!

I used a Chocolate Stout cupcake recipe, and made two different frostings based on a traditional buttercream frosting. The first, a Guinness-flavored buttercream and the second a Bailey’s-flavored buttercream. The Guinness with Bailey’s frosting are sometimes referred to as an Irish Car Bomb Cupcake!

The stout cupcake recipe is one of my favorite chocolate cupcake recipes. You really don’t taste much of the Guinness, but it has a great texture and an amazing, not too sweet chocolate taste. (Using a high-quality chocolate also helps in the taste department!)

I brushed the tops of the ones that were to get the Guinness buttercream with some additional Guinness to infuse more of the stout taste. The buttercream does pick of some of the taste of the beer, but its mild. It makes the cream less sweet, and is a great compliment to the chocolatey cupcake.

Guinness cake with "foamy" Guinness Buttercream

The Bailey’s frosted ones, aka the “Irish Cupcake Bombs”, don’t need any extra infusing. The Bailey’s alone comes across quite strongly in the buttercream, and also goes very well with the stout cupcake!!

Irish Cupcake Bomb

Sláinte!

Fly Me to the Moon…

...let me eat cupcakes among those stars!

Last night we attended a space-themed crafting party hosted by my sister’s boyfriend Alex, & my craft was space-themed cupcakes! It was a highly entertaining evening, and there were some truly amazing creations that emerged by night’s end!! (see below)

Before heading out for Brooklyn, I did my baking. I went with a basic vanilla cupcake, with vanilla frosting since the decorations (done on site) were the focus of my craft.

Still in search of a fantastic vanilla cupcake recipe, I wanted to try a new one I found that had some good reviews:  Billy’s Vanilla, Vanilla Cupcakes. He is the owner of Billy’s Bakery in NYC, and was featured in a segment on the Martha Stewart Show. I also used his Vanilla Buttercream recipe for the frosting. The cupcakes did come out great and got rave reviews, but a quick note… The recipe supposedly makes 30 cupcakes, I halved the recipe and ended up with 11! The frosting was good too, but just your basic buttercream.

Here’s some of the creations that emerged from last night’s festivities (pictures courtesy of Danielle!)

Gunner's Creation!

Alex's Creation!

Suzanna's Creation!

Alex & Suzanna's Creation!

Melinda's Creation!

Danielle's Creation

My Creation!

Happy Birthday to…

ME!

Shiver Me Timbers!

Back in elementary school, when we had a birthday, our mom would bake cupcakes for us to bring in and share with our classmates. I thought I’d revisit this tasty tradition for my 32nd bday today! So, I baked cupcakes to bring in to work tomorrow to share with my co-workers!

There was some other motivation in baking these guys today in addition to revisiting the tradition. For one, I had these cute pirate cupcake wrappers I’ve been wanting to use. Also, I really wanted to try baking cupcakes with the oven at our new house. (Check out the report at our home blog Titus Road!)

So, I opted for Coconut Cupcakes with a Rum Buttercream Frosting (I used sweetened coconut milk instead of whole milk), and did some pirate-themed decorating. The cupcakes cooked great in the new oven. I used the convection setting, and they were done in 18 minutes. The rum buttercream is VERY boozy! The recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of rum!! One would definitely suffice!

UPDATE: Yesterday, I thought there may have been too much rum in the buttercream after sampling it. But I just tried a full cupcake today, and I retract the statement! 3 Tbs of rum works out just fine for the frosting, it’s not overpowering at all.