You know this is going to be good, don't you?
Adapted from
Smitten Kitchen and
LovesToEat.
You will need:
- 1 cup Guinness beer
- 1 cup (2 sticks) butter
- 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 large eggs
- 2/3 cup sour cream
Now:
- Preheat oven to 350 F
- Line 24 cupcake cups with liners
- In a heavy saucepan over medium heat, melt 1 cup of butter and pour in 1 cup Guinness; bring to a simmer then whisk in cocoa powder till smooth. Set pan off the burner
- Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt in large bowl to blend
- Using electric mixer, beat eggs and sour cream in another large bowl
- Add slightly-cooled stout-chocolate mixture to egg mixture a little bit at a time and beat just to combine
- Add flour mixture and beat on slow speed for about one minute
- Using rubber spatula, scrape down bowl and fold batter until completely combined
- Divide batter among cupcake liners, filling them 2/3 to 3/4 of the way
- Bake until toothpick inserted into center of cupcake comes out clean -- this took me about 20 minutes, but check after 15 just to be sure
- Put cupcakes on a rack until completely cooled
Now is a good time to revisit my
previously mentioned lesson: Know Your Bakeware. I cooked 12 of these in my silicone Kitchenaid muffin pan; it was a wedding present and has never failed me. I also cooked 12 of these in my heart shaped stand-alone silicone muffin cups from Wilton. Although these worked beautifully for the
cherry limeade cupcakes, something went horribly wrong here. See?
Lovely, right? I honestly have no idea what happened here. I used a scoop, so they were all filled with the same amount of batter.
Any ideas? The only thing I did differently this time was to put paper liners in the silicone cups. Anyway, the good news is that all but four of them were salvageable with a little cleanup and a good cover of icing.
Speaking of icing! I used
Wilton's buttercream icing.
You will need:
- 1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine softened
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract (I don't use the Wilton-recommended clear, just the regular stuff)
- 4 cups sifted* powdered sugar (approximately 1 lb.)
- 2 tablespoons milk
*A note on sifting: I hate sifting. So I don't do it. A few seconds whirring around in the food processor breaks up any clumps, aerates the sugar and doesn't make me want to spork my eyeballs out the way a sifter does.
To mix it up:
- In large bowl, cream shortening and butter with electric mixer
- Add vanilla and mix again
- Gradually add sugar, about 1/4 cup at a time, beating well on medium speed -- adding it gradually helps incorporate it really well and keep it from being at all grainy when you're done
- Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often (unless you have a cool Beater Blade. Which I don't. Humph.)
- When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy. Keep bowl covered with a damp cloth until ready to use.
Now ice away to your heart's content! I used disposable icing bags from Wilton, and a fantastic giant star tip I ordered on Etsy from
Bake It Pretty. And it is giant. Here it is next to a 1-cup measuring cup:
So, the finished product:
I set aside a few of these (including the four Fail Cupcakes) for us to enjoy at home, and the rest I took to The Yankee at work today in my awesome carrier from Costco:
And that's it! Go bake, people! Oh, unless you have a brilliant theory as to what caused Cupcake Fail, in which case please leave me a comment and
then go bake.