Monday, June 8, 2009

Baking Mondays - G is for Guinness


Chocolate Guinness cupcake filled with dark chocolate ganache, topped with vanilla swiss meringue buttercream and sprinkled with green sugar crystals.

This week Mat was very excited about the prospect of Guinness cupcakes and it looks like quite a few of you were also excited about it - because Guinness won the polls with a landslide 21 out of 44 votes. I scoured the web for a Guinness cupcake recipe and all the recipes I found seemed to be pretty much the same. I figured if that many people were blogging about the same recipe that it had to be good, and I was right! I used the recipe on the Confessions of a Tart blog, with a few small changes.

Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes (taken from Confessions of a Tart)
Makes 20 to 24 cupcakes (24 for me)

1 cup Guinness
1 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup cocoa powder
2 cups plain flour
2 cups caster sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarb soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
2/3 cup sour cream
  1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius. Line 24 cupcake cups with liners.
  2. Bring Guinness and butter to simmer in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.
  3. Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt in large bowl to blend.
  4. Using electric mixer, beat eggs and sour cream in another large bowl to blend.
  5. Add stout-chocolate mixture to egg mixture and beat just to combine.
  6. Add flour mixture and beat briefly on slow speed. Using rubber spatula, fold batter until completely combined.
  7. Divide batter among cupcake liners, filling them 2/3 to 3/4 of the way.
  8. Bake for approximately 15 minutes

Dark Chocolate Ganache

226g dark chocolate, in small pieces
2/3 cup thickened cream
  1. Place chocolate into a bowl.
  2. Bring cream to boil in a small saucepan, remove from heat immediately and pour over chocolate.
  3. Stir until chocolate melts.
  4. Place ganache in fridge and stir every 10 minutes until you reach a good piping consistency.

Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Follow the directions for Almond Swiss Meringue Buttercream, but use 2 tablespoons of vanilla extract and omit the almond essence.

Assembling the Cupcake
  1. Let the cupcakes cool.
  2. Cut out a well in each cupcake (eat the cut out piece :D).
  3. Fill the well with dark chocolate ganache (pipe in the ganache).
  4. Pipe a swirl of vanilla swiss meringue buttercream on top.
  5. Sprinkle with green sugar crystals.
  6. Marvel at the beauty of the cupcake.

The ratings?

Me - 9/10 - the cake was soooo good, moist, chocolatey, awesome! The ganache was a great surprise lurking inside the cake and the buttercream was great as always. Loved it. Guinness and chocolate = awesome!
Mat - 10/10 - beer to the rescue again! Best chocolate cake ever.

Nuff said!


Now before you go please take a moment to vote for the next cupcake in the A B Cupcakes project - we are up to letter H and these are your options...

Hi-Hat
Hot Chocolate
Honey

11 comments:

Dutch girl loves2bake said...

Ooh my I'm going to try this one! Looks so yummy!

Sugar Daze said...

YES! I did vote for Guiness! These look fantastic! Hi-Hat which is on my list of cupcakes to try gets my vote for next week!

Anonymous said...

Yay! I would love to try this one. They would be great for Father's day : )

Amanda said...

Quite possibly the best cupcake I ever made had a guinness chocolate cake as its base. I am sure yours was just as tasty as mine, if not more so!

P.S. - I love this alphabet cupcake thing! It's so much fun to look forward to. :)

black vanilla rose said...

my boss is scotish and a guiness nut so i'll have to tell him about these, such a good idea xxx

alissa said...

it looks so good! very original, who knew beer and cupcakes could be such good friends?

apparentlyjessy said...

Oooh they look so rich and moist! I agree with Brandy, these would definitely be perfect for fathers day cupcakes!

Chantel said...

Looks & sounds like heaven in a cupcake!!! :)

Yum Yum!

lori said...

I'm drooling just thinking about these things! I can't wait to give the recipe a try.

cookies and cups said...

So interesting! I would love to try this one...I wish I could see inside too, but it looks so amazing from the outside!

Mermaid Sews said...

Nice cupcake. People love their guinness cupcakes.