SMS: Guinness Gingerbread

This week's SMS recipe of Guinness Gingerbread was chosen by Katie of Katiecakes - our lone English bakers who is such a trooper to be dealing with our crazy measurements and ingredients not available across the pond. You can check out her cupcakes and the recipe here.

I decided to make the gingerbread into cupcakes because my work loves cupcakes (just baked 6 dozen for a bake sale last week and they went quickly, more on that someday!). I wanted to jazz them up a bit, so I made Bailey's Irish Buttercream frosting from the recipe on Irene's awesome blog Confessions of a Tart. And, because I was feeling really ambitious, I filled the cupcakes with chocolate ganache. Since I made these early, a first in my baking club adventures, it was the reason I had leftovers of these on hand for my modified TWD tiramisu cake.

The verdict, people about died at work. Since I only made 12, I emailed my regular cupcake customers at work for a private tasting in my office, instead of just putting them in the kitchen. This way, I got to see and hear the reactions. There were lots of ohhhs and ahhhs. People LOVED these.

Since the gingerbread recipe is dairy free, I was able to eat the cones I replaced with ganache. I really liked it too. I ran out of molasses so I substituted maple syrup, and you could taste a hint of maple. Overall, it was pretty mild flavor wise - not a spicy gingerbread. But it apparently went smashingly well with the filling and frosting, so a great end result. I will definitely make these again. Check out the other SMS bakers here.