Irish Carbomb Cupcakes

Make the cupcakes:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 24 cupcake cups with liners. Bring 1 cup stout and 2 sticks butter to a simmer in a heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth. Remove from heat and set aside to cool slightly.
2. Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and 3/4 teaspoon salt in a large bowl and blend. Using an electric mixer, beat eggs and sour cream in another large bowl to blend. Add stout-chocolate mixture to egg mixture and beat just to combine. Add flour mixture and beat briefly on slow speed. Using rubber spatula, fold batter until completely combined.
3. Divide batter among cupcake liners, filling them 2/3 to 3/4 of the way full. I typically use 1/4 cup of batter to fill regular-sized cupcakes, and I did a heaping measurement for these as they don’t rise as much. Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, rotating them once front to back, It should take about 17 minutes. Cool cupcakes on a rack completely.

Make the filling:

1. Chop the chocolate and transfer it to a heatproof bowl. Heat the cream in a double boiler over medium heat until simmering and immediately pour it over the chocolate. Let it sit for one minute and then whisk until smooth. (If this has not sufficiently melted the chocolate, you can return it to a double-boiler to gently melt what remains. Or 20 seconds in the microwave, watching carefully, will also work.) Add the butter and whiskey and whisk until combined.

Fill the cupcakes:

1. Let the ganache filling cool until thick but still soft enough to be piped (the fridge/freezer will speed this along, but you must stir it every 10 minutes). Meanwhile, cut the centers out of the cooled cupcakes. You want to go most of the way down the cupcake but not cut through the bottom — aim for 2/3 of the way through. Gotta love a cupcake recipe that lets you taste-test! Put the ganache into a piping bag with a wide tip and fill the holes in each cupcake to the top (a plastic bag with a corner cut off also works just perfectly).

Make the frosting:

1. Whip the butter and cream cheese (you can also use all butter if you don’t have cream cheese) with a pinch of salt in the bowl of an electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, for several minutes until light and fluffy. Slowly add the powdered sugar, 1/4 cup at a time. Adding the sugar slowly will keep the frosting from getting too grainy and also wind up requiring less sugar to thicken up.
2. When the frosting is thick enough to hold its shape, drizzle in the Baileys (or you can use milk) and whip it until combined. If this has made the frosting too thin (it shouldn’t, but just in case) beat in another spoonful or two of powdered sugar. I added the Bailey’s to taste (read: a lot of Baileys) – I really wanted that flavor to come through!
3. Pipe frosting onto the tops of cupcakes and decorate as desired.