Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

Last week was my birthday and there was a lot of celebrating and eating out. This week I was sick and started work so there was chinese food and Mr. Lawyer cooking. So there has been a lack of experimenting in the kitchen. However, for my birthday I did make some delicious Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes, or if you're being politically correct Chocolate Whiskey and Beer Cupcakes with Baileys Buttercream Frosting. But since it's named after the drink, I'm sticking with the original name. These cupcakes were amazing but really rich. I have a huge sweet tooth but could only eat one at a time. The Baileys Buttercream Frosting is an amazing gift to mankind! Sadly, it looses it's flavor after a day so if you make the cupcakes ahead of time, don't make the frosting until right before your gathering. My Pancake Pen was extremely useful and amazing at filling the cupcake pan since I always make a mess and can never keep them even.

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes!

Guinness Chocolate Cupcakes Ingredients:
1 cup stout (such as Guinness)
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
2/3 cup sour cream

Chocolate Whiskey Ganache Filling Ingredients:
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
2/3 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons butter, room temperature
1 to 2 teaspoons Irish whiskey

Baileys Buttercream Frosting:
3 to 4 cups confections sugar
1 stick unsalted butter (room temperate)
3 to 4 tablespoons Baileys

Cupcake Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 24 cupcake cups with liners. Bring 1 cup stout and 1 cup butter to simmer in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.
2. Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and 3/4 teaspoon salt in large bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat eggs and sour cream in another large bowl to blend. Add stout-chocolate mixture to egg mixture and beat just to combine. Add flour mixture and beat briefly on slow speed. Using rubber spatula, fold batter until completely combined. Divide batter among cupcake liners, filling them 2/3 to 3/4 of the way. Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, rotating them once front to back if your oven bakes unevenly, about 17 minutes. Cool cupcakes on a rack completely.


Ganache Filling Directions:

1. Chop the chocolate and transfer it to a heatproof bowl. Heat the cream until simmering and pour it over the chocolate. Let it sit for one minute and then stir until smooth.  

2. Add the butter and whiskey and stir until combined.

Assembly Required!:

1. Let the ganache cool until thick but still soft enough to be piped. Meanwhile, using your 1-inch round cookie cutter or an apple corer, cut the centers out of the cooled cupcakes. (Or your sweet, sweet cupcake corer!) 

2. Put the ganache into a piping bag (or a baggie with the tip cut off) with a wide tip and fill the holes in each cupcake to the top.

Baileys Buttercream Frosting Directions:

1. Whip the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, for several minutes. You want to get it very light and fluffy. Slowly add the powdered sugar, a few tablespoons at a time.

2. When the frosting looks thick enough to spread, drizzle in the Baileys and whip it until combined. If this has made the frosting too thin beat in another spoonful or two of powdered sugar.

3. Frost your cookies!

YUM!

Brunch Disaster!

I clearly stated before I attempted to make brunch that I had never made pancakes before. Which is the truth. I'm more of a waffle girl. Bacon and Sausage I can handle. Scrambled eggs with cheese okay. Beyond that I've never really cooked a lot of breakfast food even though I love it and would do just about anything for a breakfast sandwich.  So it really should not come as any surprise that I burnt the pancakes (only on one side!). Luckily the burnt part peeled right off so no harm done. The recipe was solid. I was really being over ambitious and wanted to test out my new pancake pen and molds. I should have started with normal pancakes before attempting the molds. However they did work well and I loved the pen, I'm going to use it on my waffle iron next.

Fluffy Pancakes

(Allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:
3/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons white sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
2 tablespoons butter, melted
cooking spray
Directions:
1. Combine milk with vinegar in a medium bowl and set aside for 5 minutes to "sour".
2. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Whisk egg and butter into "soured" milk. Pour the flour mixture into the wet ingredients and whisk until lumps are gone.
3. Heat a large skillet over medium heat, and coat with cooking spray. Pour 1/4 cupfuls of batter onto the skillet, and cook until bubbles appear on the surface. Flip with a spatula, and cook until browned on the other side.

The most amazing Pancake Pen!

EEEEEEE!!!

Okay not a food post but a food related post. I received a Williams-Sonoma gift card for Christmas. After hours of scouring the website I carefully decided what I wanted much to the grumblings of Mr. Lawyer who stated I should just spend it on one big thing. But we don't need any one big ticket item and it's much more fun to get the most bang for your buck (that's just the way I roll). Besides, even with the gift card any Le Creuset or All-Clad item was still a bazillion dollars out of my budget. However, the Philly store didn't have all of my desired items of awesomeness and I had to order some online. TODAY THE HUGE BOX OF GOODIES CAME!! EEEEEEEEE!!

I am madly in love with my Artisan Bread Plank (J.K. Adams of Vermont, hand-sanded maple) and Slate Cheese Board (Brooklyn Slate of New York, quarried in upstate!)! I feel a wine and cheese party coming on. More coolness: The cheese board comes with a piece of soapstone so you can write the names of the cheese on it, squeeeee!!

Also incredibly awesome my Outer Space Pancake Molds (Because the lawyer insisted I get some frivolous and silly) which is accompanied by the Pancake Pen! This should be useful because I always make a disastrous mess when filling the waffle iron. We will be testing both of these items with a Saturday Brunch.

In the baking department there is a monstrous traditional maple rolling pin which will be the first thing I grab to fend off any would be robbers and a 5 piece set of biscuit cutters (now I don't have to use my drinking glasses, hooray!). And lastly my clearance steal, 100 blue swirl baking cups for a buck! Steal!

I lied. This is what I had for dinner:

Left Over Gyro Salad

Mr. Lawyer and I had lunch at the Gyro place at Reading Terminal Market. I only ate half of mine so for dinner I chopped up the remainder and added some lettuce. It was pretty good. I find that lamb is a bit to rich for me so towards the end I picked around the meat.