Guinness Chocolate Cupcakes With Baileys Frosting

Yay for recipes that have Irish spirit! I basically followed this version to the tee. Last year, I'd attempted too many substitutions, using M&Ms for the ganache, and brownie mix for the cake base, and using a mini loaf pan instead of a muffin pan. Not this year, said I.

The result? Beautifully made Guinness cupcakes! Comments? I personally would forego the chocolate ganache. It would save me having to worry about what to do with leftover heavy cream. I thought it was chocolate overload, although coworkers loved the ganache. It prevents you from really tasting the Guinness or the Baileys in my opinion. It was also too hard to pipe into the center of the cake so I ended up placing a dollop of it atop each cake, below the frosting, which was also pretty hard to pipe. I ended up with a bunch of gaps. Hence the walnuts to try to hide the gaps. Haha!

I'll make this again one of these days... maybe next year's St. Patrick's Day.