St. Patrick's Day ~ Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes

This is the first of three entries I'm doing in preparation for St. Patrick's Day which is nigh on our heels. I really wanted to make homemade Irish Soda bread so I decided to accompany the bread with other Irish-based fare.

This recipe is based on Dave Lieberman's Chocolate Stout Cupcakes. I pretty much kept the original recipe with the slight change of reducing the sugar content and not making the frosting. If you think you would like cream cheese frosting on these, go for it! I didn't have powdered sugar available, otherwise I would have made a nice glaze with sugar and Guinness.

Ingredients:
3/4 cup of cocoa powder
2 cups of flour
1-1/2 cups of sugar
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1/4 teaspoon of salt

1 14.9 oz Can of Guinness
1 stick of butter, melted and cooled
1 tablespoon of vanilla
3 eggs beaten
3/4 cup of sour cream

This recipe makes 24 cupcakes


Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. If you are a baking snob, sift your dry ingredients together.

In a separate medium bowl beat your 3 eggs, add sour cream, vanilla and Guinness and incorporate. Then slowly pour in the melted but cooled butter. Mix.

Add the wet ingredients little by litte to the dry and incoporate. On a low setting, take a handheld blender and mix the batter thoroughly. Be careful because this batter is very wet and will splatter everywhere.

Grease 2 muffin tins or line them with cupcake liners. Fill until the batter reaches the top barely. This batter won't puff up very much so it's important to fill as much as possible.

Bake in the oven for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool.

Next up: Irish Lamb Stew