For this week, I went the sweet route and chose to bake something special to celebrate Kyle’s birthday. Since Kyle’s favorite beer and first-ever drink is Guinness, I found a recipe from trusty Sally’s Baking Addiction for Guinness Chocolate Cupcakes with Mocha Guinness Buttercream. While I have made plenty of chocolate cakes and cupcakes before, I have never baked ones with alcohol in them, so I was excited for the potential challenge.
Making this Dish
The most technical part of the recipe was reducing the Guinness beer. All the other parts of the recipe were pretty much standard for a cupcake recipe (mind you, not a cake mix from a box), which made this process feel familiar. It is super important with cake recipes like this one to use room temperature ingredients which I fortunately remembered to do. I did not expect to hit a snag with the brown sugar though, which was a bit clumpy even when mixed in with the wet ingredients, but luckily disintegrated when pressed – I recommend making sure the brown sugar is as even as possible. The other part that required extra attention was making the frosting. The stand mixer does all the work, but I did not wait long enough to make sure that the frosting was homogenous and the right thickness. My impatience meant that I experienced significant trouble getting the frosting to come out of the piping bag, so I had to put it all back into the mixer, added a splash of milk, and ran the mixer for awhile longer. The frosting came out a little lighter and the perfect consistency.
Eating this Dish
The cupcake itself was light and airy with decent height and of course, terrific chocolate flavor further enhanced by the recipe’s use of espresso powder and the subtle “Guinness-iness.” I would be curious to see how using different kinds of Guinness (I saw nitrogenized cans in the grocery store) or stout might alter the taste. The mocha Guinness buttercream was the perfect pairing with stronger chocolate notes and an additional hint of Guinness. As a decorative flair, I added white sugar pearl sprinkles for a nice little contrast in texture and color.
Summary
All in all, can’t complain about what is an essentially chocolate cupcake. It was devour-worthy and tempted me enough to want to eat the whole batch. Side note: Sally was pretty dead-on about the batch making 16 cupcakes, with potential for a 17th depending on how you divide out the batter. Not sure that I would make this specific recipe again over a basic chocolate cake one, but I loved getting to try this unique take.
