St. Patty's day

Happy St. Patty's Day!

I know what you're thinking; I can see it in your eyes.  You're thinking (to yourself, of course...you'd never say it to my face) "this blog isn't even 6 months old and she's repeating recipes.  REPEATING recipes.  The nerve!" -- and you'd be right.  But (and there's always a but), it's St. Patrick's Day, and despite having made this chocolate Guinness cake before, Guinness is almost synonymous with St. Patrick's Day (well Guinness and Irish soda bread).  I first thought about making Irish soda bread, but it's an acquired taste to most.  Then, I thought I'd make something dyed green (like a green velvet cake), but my mother hates anything artificially green (not that I'll be spending St. Patty's day with my mom, but it's a very random but true fact, ask me about it sometime).  So instead I figured I'd doctor up the cake.  And by doctor it up, I mean make some cupcakes, and add some shamrock sprinkles.  Then I figured why not add some Bailey's to the mix?  So I added some to the icing (just enough to give it some flavor).  Then, I brought them to the bar.  Because thats what I assume anyone who made a cake with beer and Bailey's would do.  Or rather, what they should do.

Now I did a few un-Julie things with this recipe.  First of all, I didn't make mini cupcakes.  Shocking, right?  I went with the old school, standard sized cupcakes (mainly because I had an idea in mind for the cupcake liner that I wanted to use, and I couldn't find it in mini, and also because making that many mini cupcakes seemed like a daunting task at the time.  But enough about that).  Secondly, I didn't half the recipe.  I actually got insanely overzealous and doubled the recipe.  I wasn't sure how many cupcakes one batch would make, and I didn't want to have to remake the batter, so I doubled it.  (The answer to that question, in the future, is about 24 cupcakes per recipe; I got 48(!?!).)

Get the recipe here.  For the cupcakes, I used about 1/3 of a cup of batter in each cup.  I added Bailey's until the icing got the flavor but wasn't overbearing.  I used a quasi-heaping teaspoon of icing for each cupcake, and then sprinkled them with the shamrocks.  Very St. Patty's Day!