Happy St Patrick's Day! Guinness Cupcakes

Ok, full disclosure: I DON’T LIKE GUINNESS. With that off my chest, I am happy to report that I LOVE these cupcakes. The Guinness flavour is there in the background, but it manifests itself in the most amazing way: transforming these cupcakes into rich, chocolately, dense morsels with just a hint of spice in the background.

These are really moist little numbers, and the batter is quite thin therefore difficult to get neatly into the cupcake cases. Not that I’m overly concerned with being “neat” but I’ve found that ladling the mixture into the cases works much better than the traditional tablespoon method.

Despite not liking Guinness, I am still Irish, so I know how a pint of the dark stuff is meant to be pulled. Imagine my disgust when I was out at a gig the other day and saw Guinness being poured directly into the glass all at once. No resting time! No head! Needless to say, I was shocked on behalf of all Guinness drinkers everywhere.

But luckily you don’t have to know how to pull the perfect pint of Guinness to be able to make the perfect Guinness cupcake. Or else the barmaids of Newcastle would be out of luck.

Makes a little over a dozen

Ingredients for the cupcakes

• 250g butter
• 250ml Guinness
• 75g cocoa
• 350g caster sugar
• 142ml sour cream
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbsp vanilla sugar
• 290g plain flour
• 2.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Ingredients for the topping

• 300g cream cheese
• 150g icing sugar
• 125ml double cream, lightly whipped

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line a 12-cake cupcake tray with cases.

Begin by melting the butter and Guinness together in a saucepan in what must surely be one of the steps of making butterbeer.

When the butter has melted, measure out the sugar and cocoa and whisk into the beer mixture.

Beat the sour cream with eggs and vanilla and go ahead and pour this in too.

Since I used a smaller saucepan I then poured this mixture into a large bowl and whisked the flour and bicarb into this.

Using a ladle, divide the mixture between the cupcake cases, filling them about 2/3 of the way up. 

This part gets messy, just go with it. You will get about 14-16 cupcakes out of the mixture.

Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes, testing with a clean knife or skewer to ensure it comes out clean.

Allow to cool completely before icing.

For the icing, mix together the cream cheese and icing sugar, then fold in the gently whipped cream. 

Ice the cupcakes and then stand back and admire. Sometimes I sprinkle a little grated chocolate or crushed honeycomb over the top, if I’m getting carried away with myself.