Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

I'm a roll tonight! BTW have you noticed my fancy shmansey pictures that I now have because I have finally have a home PC! I'm doing a happy dance right now in case you couldn't tell ;)
Well, I had so much fun baking the vanilla cupcakes on Friday I wanted to make it a two parter and give this months Cupcake Hero challenge a shot. The ingredient of the month is liquor, how could I pass this up? I had a couple different ideas of things I wanted to try so I picked one I thought my friend Jen would enjoy because I was going over to her place on Sunday for the Super Bowl. One of our favorite past times together is having a good ole' time doing something called Irish Car Bomb Shots. Yummy! Basically you take a shot glass and layer Irish whiskey and Bailey's Liquor in it. You then fill a pint glass about half way with Guinness beer. Drop (er bomb) the shot glass into the pint glass and chug before the cream starts to curdle. It's super sweet and yummy.
Anyway, I thought Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes would be the prefect entry for the Cupcake Hero challenge. I wanted a Guinness cupcake with Bailey's frosting. So here we go . . . .

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes
I used the Big City Little Kitchen recipe for the Guinness cupcakes and improvised for the frosting. Pictures are from my kitchen.

Cake

• 1 cup Guinness
• 1 stick, plus 1 tb, unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 2 cups dark brown sugar
• 3/4 cup sour cream
• 2 eggs
• 1 tb vanilla extract
• 2 cups flour
• 2 1/2 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 350; butter a muffin tin.

Combine the Guinness and the butter, chopped into 1-inch chunks, in a large sauce pan, and heat to melt the butter. Remove from heat, and whisk in the cocoa and sugar. In a bowl, whisk the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla, then add to the beer mixture. Sift together the flour and baking soda, and fold into the batter. Pour into muffin molds and bake for 25 minutes, or until inserted cake tester comes out clean. Let stand 10 minutes, remove from muffin tin, and cool completely on a rack.

Frosting: I just sorta made up the frosting.

• 6 cups confectioners sugar
  
• 3 sticks of butter
• 0.5 cups of Bailey's Irish Cream
• 1 tbl vanilla

The cake turned out nice and moist with a good texture, however, there wasn't a lot of flavor. I didn't really taste any Guinness or even chocolate for that matter and they weren't very sweet. They weren't bad, they just weren't that great. The frosting on the other hand, woowza! Flavor overload! I used waaaaaay too much a Bailey's. it was like licking pure Bailey's on a cupcake. I think if I ever attempt to make these again I will use half as much Bailey's and add a little milk. I think it I made them again I would also spike the cake with a little warm whiskey glaze because I did miss that little bitey part of what makes an Irish Car Bomb shot great. All in All, not a totally disaster, this recipe could use some work, but I did have a lot of fun! I have decided not to enter it and try something different. I'm thinking almond champagne soaked pears cake with a mascarpone frosting? We shall see :)