irish car bomb cupcakes

this week's mission was to make some kind of incredible thank-you gift to show my appreciation to our friends brutus and kyle, who let marty and i stay at their apartment all week preceding my cousin's wedding. cupcakes have been on my mind lately, and thanks to rachel's suggestion i headed over to smitten kitchen for this incredible recipe.

if you're unfamiliar with the drink sensation that is the "irish car bomb" it goes something like this: you take a shot glass and fill it half full of bailey's irish cream; float jameson irish whiskey on top to fill the shot glass, which you then drop (glass and all) into 3/4 pint of guinness and chug. i don't say "chug" lightly here. this is what they call a "volatile drink" - meaning it not only froths and foams when you drop the shot into the beer, but it will also start to curdle almost immediately if you let it, so you really don't want to waste time.

perhaps it's in bad taste to name a drink after an act of violence, and perhaps i'm perpetuating that by claiming the name for these cupcakes, but i admire a nation that refers to its period of ethno-political conflict as "The Troubles," and chocolate whiskey and beer cupcakes just doesn't have the same ring to it.

i've said it before, but smitten kitchen is brilliant. who would think to turn that into cupcake form? feel free to submit a comment here with suggestions of what else you'd like to see turned into cupcake form. i'll see what i can make happen.

i should also mention that these may top the list of most expensive homemade cupcakes ever.

could these few ingredients actually cost over $45? in hawai'i they sure can.
don't let this dissuade you from trying - i'm sure if you live someplace where food is reasonably priced you won't have the sticker shock. it's just that here in the most oil-dependent state in the nation we import 90% of our food from overseas, and that's a problem.

i drew the line at the $4 whole paycheck foods wanted to charge me for paper cupcake liners, and i'm going to go ahead and encourage a cultural shift here - do we really need to have our cupcakes half-wrapped in paper? my cupcake tin is nonstick, so it's not an issue on my end, and i am hopeful that the recipients of my baked goods will embrace the going green aspect of their gift.

i should also say these are not cupcakes for the fainthearted - neither for the baking nor the eating. it took me a solid 3 hours of baking/assembly, and well - you can see the ingredients.

so here's the recipe - from smitten kitchen: (with my comments in italics)

Chocolate Whiskey and Beer Cupcakes
Makes 20 to 24 cupcakes

For the Guinness Chocolate Cupcakes
1 cup stout (such as Guinness)
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably Dutch-process)
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

Ganache Filling (Updated to double it, based on many commenters suggestions — thanks!)
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
2/3 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons butter, room temperature
1 to 2 teaspoons Irish whiskey (I recommend Jameson, though I had to substitute Jack Daniels because that's all I could find in the tiny airplane-sized bottle, and since i'm living in the house of jehovah right now with grandma ho i don't have the usual bottle of jameson in the cupboard)

Baileys Frosting
3 to 4 cups confections sugar
1 stick (1/2 cup or 4 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 to 4 tablespoons Baileys (or milk, or heavy cream, or a combination thereof)

Special equipment: 1-inch round cookie cutter or an apple corer and a piping bag (though a plastic bag with the corner snipped off will also work - unless you let your ganache chill too long and then you bust multiple holes in the ziplock bag that result in many spouts for frosting, ahem)

Make the cupcakes: Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 24 cupcake cups with liners (or not - save the earth!). Bring 1 cup stout and 1 cup butter to simmer in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. notice that says one cup of guinness - that means you'll have to drink the rest of the beer while baking, bonus! Add cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.

Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and 3/4 teaspoon salt in large bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat eggs and sour cream in another large bowl to blend. Add stout-chocolate mixture to egg mixture and beat just to combine. Add flour mixture and beat briefly on slow speed. Using rubber spatula, fold batter until completely combined. Divide batter among cupcake liners, filling them 2/3 to 3/4 of the way. Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, rotating them once front to back if your oven bakes unevenly, about 17 minutes. Cool cupcakes on a rack completely. my cupcakes took 16-17 mins and were very fluffy/springy. i couldn't tell if they really tasted like guinness, or if i just had that taste in my mouth from finishing off the beer.

Make the filling: Chop the chocolate and transfer it to a heatproof bowl. Heat the cream until simmering and pour it over the chocolate. Let it sit for one minute and then stir until smooth. (If this has not sufficiently melted the chocolate, you can return it to a double-boiler to gently melt what remains. 20 seconds in the microwave, watching carefully, will also work.) Add the butter and whiskey (if you’re using it) and stir until combined. i used the microwave method - since i have use of a microwave at grandma's house and the chocolate melting process can be a little nerve-wracking when you're worried about ruining that hella expensive chocolate you just bought - it took maybe 2 rounds of 30 seconds each with a lot of stirring in between rounds to get there - don't overdo it. i have to say here, the chocolate ganache went from "mmm, that's tasty" with the ghiradelli and cream to "i may just have to pipe that directly into my mouth and forgo the whole cupcake thing" when i added the whiskey. turns out whiskey and chocolate is a knockout combination. i would even go ahead and add another couple teaspoons of whiskey next time to bump up the flavor. i was worried about it preventing the ganache from setting, but it set just fine.

Fill the cupcakes: Let the ganache cool until thick but still soft enough to be piped (the fridge will speed this along but you must stir it every 10 minutes). Meanwhile, using your 1-inch round cookie cutter or an apple corer, cut the centers out of the cooled cupcakes. You want to go most of the way down the cupcake but not cut through the bottom — aim for 2/3 of the way. A slim spoon or grapefruit knife will help you get the center out. Those are your “tasters”. Put the ganache into a piping bag with a wide tip and fill the holes in each cupcake to the top.
she says "tasters" here like there are going to be cute little plugs of cake to pop in your mouth, but what i ended up with was a big pile of crumbs. not that that stopped me from shoving a handful in my mouth.

i'm including a picture of what an apple corer looks like here - because i had to ask somebody myself. it worked great, and i probably didn't even need the grapefruit knife, though i was super excited to have an excuse to use what is probably my favorite utensil of all time - grandma ho has this special grapefruit knife that has one end with two blades so that you can cut up both sides of the grapefruit section at the same time - i love this knife and i think about it every time i eat grapefruit. that's not the end i used for the cupcakes, i'm just excited about it.

 

Make the frosting: Whip the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, for several minutes. You want to get it very light and fluffy. Slowly add the powdered sugar, a few tablespoons at a time. if i could have located my sifter after the move i would have used it here to sift in the powdered sugar so i wouldn't have to content with the lumps.

[This is a fantastic trick I picked up while working on the cupcakes article for Martha Stewart Living; the test kitchen chefs had found that when they added the sugar slowly, quick buttercream frostings got less grainy, and tended to require less sugar to thicken them up.]

When the frosting looks thick enough to spread, drizzle in the Baileys (or milk) and whip it until combined. If this has made the frosting too thin (it shouldn’t, but just in case) beat in another spoonful or two of powdered sugar.

Ice and decorate the cupcakes.

i was being stingy with the ganache at first, but i ended up with extra at the end - so don't be shy to fill them full. i also chilled the ganache a little too long in the fridge - and didn't let it come back to room temp before putting it into my makeshift pastry bag, so i busted some extra holes in the sides which ended up decorating the area around my cupcakes and hands as well.

i experimented with a few different designs. here's what the combination of whiskey ganache and baileys frosting looks like:

Do ahead: You can bake the cupcakes a week or two in advance and store them, well wrapped, in the freezer. You can also fill them before you freeze them. They also keep filled — or filled and frosted — in the fridge for a day. (Longer, they will start to get stale.)

i'll let you know how they are received.

love day cooking

valentines day was a week ago, but if you're like me you're always looking for ideas to store away for next valentines day, so i thought i'd share the menu from our meal. we decided to stay in and cook at home this year - i think the hype around going out to dinner for valentines is crazy and i wanted no part of that. but i did want to celebrate the day by trying out some new recipes.

oven grilled flank steak - recipe from nytimes food blog bitten. this is a great and easy way to get the outsides of your steak nice and singed on the stove and then cooked in the oven. plus i always like a dish in a cast iron pan that doesn't need to dirty extra dishes. i especially like the part of the recipe that says, "when the smoke becomes intolerable, take it off the stove" that didn't happen, but i prepped myself to detach the smoke alarm in case it did.


here are the steaks smothered in carmelized shallots.


and we made a trip over to the fish market in rockridge to buy fresh scallops, which i marinaded for a moment in a passionfruit, lavender, maple, sesame oil sauce and then seared on the stove.


sauteed broccoli & collards with bacon.


smashed potatoes - of all the things on the table that night, these definitely were the most discussed, as in "i only want to eat potatoes like this for the rest of my life." more on that later.


and finally, i attempted a molten chocolate souffle, recipe from bitten again. i was skeptical of the short baking time, so i left them in there a little longer which kind of ruined the molten effect, but they were still tasty. especially with homemade whipped cream. and i'm a fan of anything you can make in a rammekin.

so the "smashed potatoes" recipe comes from pioneer woman, via veganyumyum. they call them "crash potatoes," but i like my name better - i think it's more accurate and it's a reference to a phrase i used to say as a child every time i came to the top of an escalator. not sure what that was about... ah, kids.
they are really everything that's good about potatoes: they have the crispiness of homefries, the tenderness of mashed potatoes, and the nutrious skins still on like baked potatoes. plus they're way healthier than the way i make mashed potatoes because they only have olive oil and spices drizzled on them. fabulous.


so the idea is: you boil the potatoes whole (i used the pressure cooker for the first time with potatoes and it worked great in 10 mins), then you lay them on a baking sheet and cut a little "x" on the top of them to help them smash more gracefully. then you take your potato masher (or a fork) and smash them. then drizzle them with olive oil and spices - in this case i used rosemary, salt, a little lavendar,black pepper, and a little crushed red pepper - just because it was valentines day and i felt like we should have the color. then you bake them in a hot oven (450 degrees) for about 20 mins or as long as they are still getting crispy and not burnt.


here's my little romantic decorative craft project, thanks to mayamade for the inspiration. i cut out heart shapes from brown paper bags and then sewed them into strings using a running basting stitch on the sewing machine, which was really fun.

thanks to sele for the food photo documentation.

grapefruitette

an update from the candied citrus peel project. as previously mentioned, i started some candied grapefruit peels while baking the citrus cake, which weren't done in time to contribute to the cake, and after realizing through taste test that the lady from smittenkitchen was absolutely right about them being wickedly bitter, i left them "drying" on my countertop for two days. i took all the advice of boiling them three times in water before boiling in sugar water, and scraping as much of the pith off as i could to reduce bitterness, but those suckers are still face-scrunchingly bitter.


finally this morning i was able to conquer my chocolate hangover enough to proceed with the orangette-ifying of the grapefruit peels and based on my taste-as-you-go method, the dark chocolate was just what they needed to turn delicious. they're drying again now, and i think we have success.

sugar high of the month

we have a lot of citrus in our lives right now in northern california. i went to the farmers' market when we got back from hawai'i to see what's in season around here these days and that was about it: lots of citrus.


and because i'm on this kick of trying to use things i'd otherwise be throwing away, i got the idea to make candied citrus peels. with the help of smittenkitchen, i made a batch of assorted blood orange, grapefruit, and meyer lemon peels last week. they turned out really tasty, but i think i miscalculated on how thin to cut them and they were a little mushier than expected. i had intended to make orangettes out of them to serve to guests, but they lacked enough of a backbone to hold up to that intention. marty thought they'd be great paired with a dark chocolate cake, and i'm never one to say no to chocolate cake, but it took me a while to muster up the energy to actually make one. until last night, when my chocolate cravings were insatiable. i searched around the internet for a proper recipe; we were thinking something along the lines of a flourless chocolate cake was the way to go, but i didn't have enough eggs in my refrigerator for that, and i wanted to use my new cake pans (thanks, mom!). so i landed back with smittenkitchen for her double chocolate layer cake. i read that at first as "double-layer chocolate cake," but really she means "double chocolate" layer cake - as in not for the faint of [chocolate] heart - but who wants to hang out with those people, anyway?


i did a whole lotta substituting in the cake recipe in a desperate attempt to not walk to the store in the rain. the good news about that is: it's fine to use three different types of milk (and by milk i mean heavy cream, coconut milk, and powdered milk) instead of buttermilk in this recipe (just add a splash of vinegar and it's all good). and it's fine to use olive oil instead of vegetable oil in chocolate cake - i used to only use olive oil when i was baking a lot of cakes in high school and people love it. the bad news is: it didn't save me from eventually having to run to the store 5 minutes to closing to get more cream and chocolate, because there is no substitution for good chocolate. i used scharffen berger's semisweet for this and the results were fabulous.


i filled and frosted the two cakes with the chocolate ganache from the recipe along with a layer of the candied citrus peels, and i think they pair together quite nicely. i was trying to make another batch of candied grapefruit peels while the cake was baking - because i guess i have a hard time sticking to just one task - but they weren't done in time for decorating the cake, so i have them drying this morning. i cut them a bit bigger this time for another go at the orangette idea. but for now i can't think about any more chocolate.


here's a quick tip about cake storage: if you are like me and don't have a proper carrying container to keep your cake in and you don't want to have your tin foil or plastic wrap ruining your frosting- my go-to method involves cocktail umbrellas. yep, i use them to test if the cake is done baking (because strangely i have a lot of cocktail umbrellas but no toothpicks) and then they double as a festive tent poles for my tin foil wrapping.