Guiness Cupcakes with Macadamia Frosting

Guinness = delicious, and cupcakes = delicious. So Guinness cupcakes should be stellar, right? A good friend who is a fellow Guinness lover had a medical procedure done where he couldn't eat/drink for awhile, so I thought I would make him some cupcakes for when he got home. And I figured it would be ok to make a dozen of them since my brother and his wife came in later that day. The point being that I knew I wouldn't eat them all because I had enough people to help me.


I found this great recipe on Dulcedo for Guinness Cupcakes with Baily's Irish Cream Frosting and I had to make it. Evidently it's actually from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, which was an excellent gift from a great friend for my 10 year cancer survivorship anniversary. I must have been too busy ogling the hazelnut cupcakes to notice the stout cupcakes.



Ingredients for Cupcakes

• 3/4 cup soy milk


• 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar


• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour


• 1/3 cup unprocessed cocoa powder (original recipe calls for Dutch-processed)


• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda


• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder


• 1/4 teaspoon salt


• 1/4 cup Guinness


• 3/4 cup sugar


• 1/3 cup canola oil


• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract (I omitted this because I'm running low)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a small bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.


In the bowl of an electric mixer, whisk together the soy milk and the vinegar. Add the Guinness, sugar, oil, and vanilla to the soy milk mixture and beat until foamy. Add the dry ingredients in two batches and beat until well incorporated.Fill your cupcakes containers of choice 3/4 full.


Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean and the top springs back when lightly touched. Transfer to a wire rack and allow cupcakes to cool completely before frosting.


Icing

I got lazy and made a simple icing:

• 2-3 cups confectioner's sugar


• 2 TB macadamia liqueur


• Splash of vanilla soy milk

Mix together and enjoy.

These were solid chocolate cupcakes. I think I overdid it with the icing- it's incredibly sweet and may detract from the cake. There was a nice thing crunch on top where I evidently overcooked them, but I think it made them better. And you cannot taste the (very minimal amount of) Guinness.

Cupcakes for Dinner

Today (and last night when I came home from work drunk...) I decided to throw healthy eating to the wind. Sort of...The past 2 days have been sort of "calorie-free" for me. Today the craving for chocolate took over and I was unable to control myself. The only logical next step was to make cupcakes. And eat them for dinner.




I used this recipe for the vanilla cake, adding some yummy vanilla hazelnut black tea to steep in the water. For the frosting, I used this recipe and added more tea to it.

Between the Hershey's Kisses, Hershey's Nuggets, and 5 cupcakes I ate for dinner, I'm about to throw up from all the sugar. With the frosting, the cupcakes are very sweet, but in a good way. I just ate too many other sweet things in too short of a time span.

Verdict? They might have a little too much tea flavor and none of the vanilla hazlenut flavor that I cherish when I drink a cup of tea every day. I'm in the midst of a major sugar crash right now and am pretty sure I have sugar-induced depression. Right, back to the cupcakes. They're ok. Will I make them again? Without the tea, maybe. But I'm debating throwing away the entire batch instead of taking them to work. The cakes are stuck in the wrappers, which is no fun.

Yes, I threw them out even though they were probably edible.