Sláinte!

   Thursday marks one of the biggest drinking day of the year. Everyone claims to be Irish on St. Patrick's Day. However, there are some of us who are lucky enough to be Irish every day of the year! I've been thinking for a while about what kind of cupcakes I wanted to make to celebrate the holiday. Last year I made some fun, bright green cupcakes with orange, green and yellow cupcakes. This year I decided to go away from the fake colored cupcakes (which have their place) and move onto something natural. I made chocolate cupcakes with a Jameson Whiskey cream filling and an Irish Cream butter cream frosting.

Cute, no?

I used a basic chocolate cake recipe for the cupcake itself.

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup strong brewed coffee, cooled
• 3 large eggs
• 1 (8-ounce) container sour cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 
  
  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line muffin pans with paper liners and set aside.
  In a large bowl, whisk flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add oil, coffee, and eggs. Beat at medium speed with an electric mixer until smooth. Mix in the sour cream and vanilla.
  Spoon the batter evenly into prepared muffin cups, filling each 2/3 full. Bake until a tester inserted in center comes out clean, for 16 to 18 minutes. Let them cool in pans on wire racks for 5 minutes. Remove from the pans and cool completely on wire racks.

Since I decided to go with a chocolate cupcake for St. Patrick's Day, which is something I couldn't dye green, I decided to use green cupcake liners. They were much more appropriate on these cupcakes than on the Lemon Blackberry ones! 

This recipe ended up giving me 35 cupcakes, one short of three dozen. They came out of the oven without a hitch and while they cooled I made a filling for the cupcakes. 

The filling I made was a Jameson whipped cream. I took about 4 ounces of cream cheese and put it in the kitchenaid and mixed it until it was very creamy.

I then added the best part of the filling...the Jameson Irish Whiskey. I added about 1/4 of a cup of whiskey and mixed it in with the cream cheese. Once this was all incorporated I folded in 8 ounces of cool whip to get a really light but strongly whiskey flavored filling. 

It packs a punch for only having 1/4 of a cup of whiskey! I then added it to a piping bag being held up by non other than a Guinness Imperial pint glass which I felt was only appropriate considering the theme.

I then piped some of the filling into each cupcake. I wanted enough that you could taste it but not too much that the cupcake would explode with filling! 

After the cupcakes were all filled I started to make my Irish Cream frosting. I took the remaining 4 ounces of cream cheese, a stick and half of butter and about 1/3 of a cup of Irish cream and mixed them all together while adding powdered sugar until I got the consistency I was looking for. 

I knew that I had to have some sort of Irish flair on these cupcakes or else you wouldn't know that they were meant to be St. Patrick's Day Cupcakes. I decided that some Irish themed chocolates would be really cute accents. I picked up some melting chocolates in green and used three different types of chocolate molds. Shamrocks, Celtic knots and Claddaghs. I melted the chocolate on a make shift double boiler and then put them into molds, let them chill and popped them out. Voila, Irish chocolates! 

I then piped on the Irish cream frosting, shook some shamrock sprinkles on and topped each cupcake with a chocolate. I think they turned out really cute. They are festive and yet they give you lots of Irish flavors. I just hope they go over as well as I think they will!

I hope everyone enjoys their St. Patrick's Day. Have fun! Be Safe. Erin Go Bragh! 

Go cgasfar le cheile sinn aris.