Wet Chocolate Irish Coffee Cupcakes

It has been raining here in the Bay for about 5 days straight.  Yesterday, St. Patrick's Day, it was cold and dark and dreary and threatening to rain again so 98.99% of the pictures I took suck.  Stupid bad kitchen lighting.  When I was done, I set myself up outside so I could get try to get SOMETHING that looked decent and then... it started to rain. -.-  Why am I telling you this?  Well because it is still cold and windy but its gorgeously sunny too now.  Fickle Nor Cal weather plots to ruin my pictures, I swear!!!

My friends decided to have a St. Patrick's Day dinner last night and not only did I make some yummy twice baked green pesto potatoes but I also baked cupcakes that were worthy of any leprechaun's gold.

I say that mainly because they had booze and condensed milk in them.  I think that is the winning combination to making anything good, though haha.

I had the idea of Irish coffee cupcakes... but while researching it I stared getting bored because it had been done so many times.  Then I had a light bulb moment.  You should be able to TASTE the booze, not just let it bake out in the oven... and the best way to do that is to douse them in some kind of concoction and serve them wet.

Yup, I made the Irish coffee cupcakes into wet cupcakes.  Almost like my tres leches cupcakes, but with more booze and with a chocolate based so it could hold the coffee and whiskey better.

The frosting was still whipped cream to keep it light.. but it was infused with Bailey's Irish Cream and it was delicious.  Added a light sprinkling of brown sugar and green shamrocks as garnish, and topped them off with a chocolate shamrock.

Irish Coffee Cupcakes
makes 15, bake at 350* for about 18-20 minutes


3/4 cup (1.5 sticks) butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla
3 eggs, separated
1 cup flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon strongly brewed coffee

Directions:
1. Cream together butter, sugars and vanilla.  Ad egg yolks one at at time.
2. In a separate bowl, combine flour, cocoa, salt and baking soda and set aside.
3. Add coffee to buttermilk.
4. Add flour mixture and buttermilk mixture in additions to butter/sugar mixture.  Always end with flour mixture.
4. Beat egg whites in a separate bowl until stiff peaks form.  Fold into the rest of the batter.
5.  Scoop batter into liners, make sure not to overfill.  Bake for around 18-20 minutes at 350*.
6. When cupcakes are cool, take a tooth pick and make holes throughout the cupcake, all the way to the bottom.
7. Ready the sauce!


Coffee-Jameson Sauce
1/4 cup Jameson Whiskey (Add more if you want them more boozey, I will next time for sure.)
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup  cool strongly brewed coffee
1/2 cup condensed milk

Directions:
1.Whisk together all ingredients.
2. Slowly spoon 2 tablespoons, 1 at a time, over each cupcake.  (Note:  Cupcakes liners should be foil or silicone.)
3. Refrigerate over night or for 3-4 hours.  Spoon 1 teaspoon over each cupcake.


Bailey's Whipped Frosting
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons Bailey's Irish Cream

Directions:
1.Mix together all ingredients in electric mixer until stiff peaks form.
2. Frost!

This frosting is AWESOME.  I don't thinki can say it enough.  I really like lighter whipped frostings, but the faint taste of the Bailey's Irish Cream is wonderful, really. If i meet my fate by drowning, please let it be in a vat of this.

Add your garnish.  In my case, I first added the brown sugar and the green shamrocks.  To be clear, I actually was a bit crazy and separated out  my sprinkles.

 

Not only am i super proud of this recipe and the overall execution... but I also finally got to use the  tea cups that pandippo got me for Christmas!  Cuz I mean really, if you're going to eat a coffee based cupcake it should be in a cute little cup right?  Saucer is an added bonus.   SO CUTE.

 

If you want to be extra fancy, you can melt chocolate chips in a zip lock and pipe them into shamrocks.

Now my little cupcakes were ready to party.  And party they did. We did. Haha.

Pinkies up when partaking in these cupcakes.  Cuz we're fancy like that.

These cupcakes are the kind of cupcakes that you may want to eat with a spoon. The chocolate is actually super absorbent, more than the tres leches cupcakes were actually, so they aren't as messy as they could be.  But I think it's still easier to eat with a spoon.

I am definetely making these again next year.  I was actually chastised for not bringing more than one cupcake a person!  There were zero left overs.  Uh oh.  I had promised someone extras... but that clearly is not going to happen.

Hope you guys had an awesome Happy St. Patrick's Day too!

xoxo,
Anna

P.S.  And in case you're curious about what else was eaten that night?  Everything.

Cinnamon Coffee Cupcakes

Okay. I'm not a coffee drinker. Sometimes on Monday mornings when I'm walking through my work building's doors i want to stop at the front desk and crawl underneath it and live there in darkness and slumber forever -- that's when i contemplate starting a coffee addiction. But I never do and in general i'll pass on the Starbucks. Which means i don't know the difference between a latte and a mocha. So when googling a coffee based cupcakes, all the espresso/cappuccino words were confusing as heck. So i'm not labeling it anything other than coffee. It was either that or Cinnamon Mocha Choca Lata Ya Ya Cupcakes. And that's kind of long.

I wasn't sure if i was even going to like them. But i did! A lot. =x I think it's because the cake part wasn't very heavy on the coffee taste, but the frosting totally was. There are some things that I will change the second time around, but all in all i was pleased.

The cake part was based off of this recipe. And the frosting was based off of this, but now seeing it next to what i actually did, it's not what i did at all. Oh well. I'm going to go with mine was even yummier than whatever it would have been!

Cinnamon Coffee Cupcakes

(Baked for 14 minutes at 350*, makes 11.)

1/4 cup (1/2 a stick) unsalted butter at room temp

2/3 cup sugar

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

14 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/4 cup baking cocoa

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 cup strong brewed coffee, room temperature

(I don't brew coffee... haha. So instead i cheated and did instant coffee. So I did 6 table spoons of instant coffee into 1/2 a cup of boiling water, and drew the 1/4 cup from there)

3 tablespoons buttermilk

1. In a bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt, baking powder and cinnamon. Set aside.

2. In a separate large bowl, cream butter and sugar. Add the egg. Beat in vanilla.

3. In a third bowl/cup combine buttermilk and coffee.

4. Add the flour mixture in three parts to the large bowl, alternating with additions of the buttermilk/coffee, beating until combined after each addition.

These plumped up a lot. They look like plain chocolate cupcakes, but smell and taste really cinnamony.

Coffee Frosting

4 oz cream cheese (1/2 a standard package)

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter

2 cups powdered sugar

2 table spoons strongly brewed coffee

2 teaspoons vanilla

1. With a hand mixer, blend together the butter and cream cheese.

2. Add vanilla and coffee.

3. Add powdered sugar.

Now, there is a lot of liquid in this frosting. Which means that you have to be super careful that your butter and cream cheese AREN'T too soft, but also that you add enough powdered sugar to stabilize it. It's not a runny frosting, but it's def not as hard as others. I put this in the freezer for about 5 minutes before I piped it on to harden it up.

I decided to play around with something other than the 1M in tip when frosting these because all the cupcakes are kinda starting to look the same - right? So i tried frosting with a 12. And i didn't like how it looked... And not just b/c it had a few bubbles.

So i switched it up and frosted the remaining ones with a 2D.

In the end, i think that i like 1M best for a reason. =p

I have been eating these cold, right out of the fridge for like 3 days now. This is what is left.

Don't judge me!!! I run/kick box for a reason; Total Cupcake Domination. Take no prisoners, eat all in sight.

xoxo,

Anna