Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

HEY YOU GUYS

I agreed to go to my roller derby league’s birthday party last weekend. Big party, 40+ people out of the 70-some-odd in the league were there. I’m not good with parties, but I went anyway. Why would I condemn myself to a few hours of feeling intimidated with the task of solving the Rubik’s Cube of idle socialization?

Because I like my league.

AND

Because it meant I could make, like, FIFTY cupcakes!

Pre-ganache-and-frosting, obvi.

It gets better!

I made IRISH CAR BOMB CUPCAKES!

An Irish Car Bomb is a cocktail. A shot glass that’s half-full of whiskey and half-full of Irish crème liqueur is dropped into a pint of stout and consumed quickly. Irish Car Bomb cupcakes feature chocolate cupcakes made with stout, whiskey chocolate ganache, and Irish crème liqueur frosting. Yes, it’s buh-genius, and you can find recipes for it all over the Internetz. I used the Brown Eyed Baker’s.

My favorite part about making these cupcakes was the ganache. Making ganache is like a magic trick.

One minute it looks like this...

...and the next minute it’s like this! Whoa!

As so directed by to the afore-linked-to Brown Eyed Baker’s instructions, I scooped out the insides of the cupcakes and filled them with ganache (which went over well – a jammer from the A team said that she liked the “surprise”). I later stumbled across a version of the recipe where the cupcake is merely dipped in the ganache without any digging involved. If you’re contemplating making Irish Car Bomb cupcakes and don’t want a sizable Tupperware full of little cupcake caps leftover, you might want to be aware of the dipping option.

Pro-tip: if you want the ganache to look all shiny (it’ll only matter to you, probably,
because it’ll get covered with frosting), don’t fill just one cupcake before sticking
the ganache in the refrigerator for a few hours before finishing the rest.

Maybe the leftovers won’t annoy you like they annoyed me. Not only did I have a bunch of caps, I also had a ludicrous amount of frosting. I am SO over having frosting leftover in my refrigerator, people! EVERY TIME I make cupcakes, I swurr…

Do you SEE this?
This isn’t even ALL of the leftover frosting!

If the ganache magic trick was my favorite part of making the cupcakes, my favorite part of delivering was hauling ass down the freeway listening to RATM’s Renegades with no less than FIFTY cupcakes in the backseat. That’s a moment I wouldn’t mind having replayed to me on Judgment Day. Sweet sassy molassey, I felt like a bad ass. I wonder if that’s how caterers feel while they’re driving a vanload of food to an event.

The one underneath is full.

If the experience will attest, Irish Car Bomb cupcakes are a crowd pleaser (unless there’s a score of people who thought they were awful and I didn’t hear about it – not outside the realm of possibilities since I ended up in a corner for most of the party). When I crashed one of the higher-level practices a few days later (not just because it’s encouraged, but because I have boundary issues), I was asked if I was “the one who made the cupcakes” because they were really good. All I did was follow the recipe. It’s a pretty simple formula for feeling like a bad ass.

How are you with parties?
Any experience with Irish Car Bomb cupcakes?
If you were hauling ass down the freeway with FIFTY cupcakes in the backseat, what would you want to listen to?