Guinness - Recipes

Trying to reinforce the Irish side of our heritage to the kids, I like to attempt about one Irish meal per year. LOL :-) Here are recipes for corned beef, and Guinness cupcakes!

For a few years now, I've used Guinness to cook the corned beef in. It's soooo delicious!

Put corned beef in crock pot, and sprinkle with seasoning packet. Add 2 cans of Guinness Draught (14.9 size), and 1/2 an onion and a bunch of garlic cloves, cut in half. You want the liquid to almost cover the meat (smaller size meat might only need 1 can). Cook on low for 9hrs. It's easy, and SOOOO yummy.

Use about a cup or so of the beer "gravy" once the meat is done, to add to the water to cook the cabbage in.

This year also, I bought a 4 pack of the beers to use for the cooking, and kinda wanted to use them up. (I needed 2 for the main corned beef, another 1 for the smaller corned beef we'll use Reuben Loaf), but I had one can left. I found a recipe online for Guinness Chocolate cupcakes. Why not!

Well, they are actually delicious! So if you ever find yourself with an abundance of Guinness on hand that you aren't drinking - well, make a cupcake! They are moist, and the perfect balance of fluffy/dense. We really enjoyed them. The beer scent is obvious in the uncooked batter, but really not detectable by taste once baked. A very nice from scratch chocolate cupcake recipe.

Green, white, and orange, naturally.

GUINNESS CHOCOLATE CUPCAKE WITH BAILEY'S IRISH CREAM FROSTING
1 C unsalted butter (or use salted, and decrease added salt by a bit)
1 C Guinness Draught or Stout
2/3 C dutch processed cocoa powder
1 C brown sugar
1 t salt
2 C all purpose flour
1 C white sugar
1 1/4 t baking soda
2 eggs
1/2 C sour cream

Preheat oven to 350

In a saucepan, heat butter, beer, cocoa and brown sugar, whisking until butter is melted and mixture is smooth. Remove from heat and cool to room temp.

In your mixing bowl, combine salt, flour, white sugar and baking soda. Add the cooled beer mixture and beat on medium for 1 min. Add eggs and sour cream and beat on medium for 2 mins or until smooth.

Divide batter evenly among cupcake cups. Bake for approx 20 mins, or until done. Cool before icing.

ICING RECIPE
** I didn't want to buy real (alcoholic) Bailey's for this, because it uses so little, and I knew I'd probably never use it again - and alcohol is so $$. So I substituted for using Bailey coffee creamer instead. The flavour is probably lighter and less intense than using the real deal as suggested in recipe, but this does make a nice "light irish cream" flavour.

1/2 C  butter
4 C icing (powdered) sugar
1 pinch salt
3 T Irish Cream (Bailey's or Carolan's)*
1 T milk *

*Or substitute approx 4 T Bailey's coffee creamer in place of Irish Cream and Milk

Mix together until sugar is incorporated in the butter and liquid - then beat on high until light and fluffy.