Guinness and Baileys Cupcakes

This post is slightly late in coming! I made these for St Patricks Day.

The boy's mum bumped in to a friend of ours and mentioned to them that her and the boy's dad were coming over to our house for St Paddy's Day lunch. She also mentioned that I was going to make St Paddy's day cupcakes, to which they replied "Oh they'll probably just be green".

She thought "I doubt it" and she was right!

I made Guinness and Baileys cupcakes. You'll have to forgive me but I thought this was a really original idea and I had come up with it all by myself. A little gooogling later, I discovered everyone and their aunt was making them!

Either way they were delicious.

I followed this recipe for the Guinness cakes by Dave Leiberman.

I originally thought I would make a Baileys cream to top them with because I had forgotten how "not sweet" the cakes were. After a quick nibble, to check they weren't posioned, I decided a sweet buttercream would be better.

I  used this recipe for the Baileys buttercream from Tide and Thyme.

As you can see I topped them with a swirl, however, not just any swirl an Ateco piping tip swirl!  I have been on the hunt for a large piping tip forever, I like the Wilton 1M but I would like it to be a bit bigger. After goggling, because I'm obsessive like that, I heard mention of Ateco but apparently you can only get them in the US and Australia. My excitment when I found them on a trip to Nottingham was immense. Haha.

I top them with a fondant "Shamrock". It's not quite a shamrock but this is the only cutter I had and I didn't fancy cutting them all by hand, I think you get the general idea.

The boys mum and dad seemed to like them. The boys dad even asked for seconds.

The sponge is a rich chocolate with a hint of an oaky stout flavour which I think makes the chocolate flavour deeper and the icing is creamy, boozy delicious-ness.

You can definately have these anytime of year - but just for grown ups!

Happy baking.