St. Patrick's Day: baking with the boys #momlife

When you're Irish St. Patrick's Day doesn't mean getting belligerent and drinking green beer. It's about family. Today the boys and I are in the kitchen making Stout Cupcakes with Irish Cream frosting.

It's easy to make this an allergen friendly recipe:

~ Gluten-free substitute a gluten-free stout and flour.

~ Egg free substitute eggs with egg replacer.

~ Sugar free you can substitute agave (at least that's what I use as a sugar substitute)

~ Dairy free you can use vegan butter (I love smart balance) and Irish cream flavor instead of Irish Cream liquor.

The recipe we'll be using today is a one bowl cupcake recipe. To help you follow along, I will measure my ingredients today.

First thing you need to do is unplug the kids from electronic devices. I'll be back as soon as I do that.

Five minutes later: my kids are adorable they want to wait until my sister's get here so they can bake with their aunts.

While we wait here's my recipe we're using:

Recipe:

dry ingredients:

2c flour

3/4c sugar

1/2c brown sugar

1/2t salt

1t baking soda

1t baking powder

3/4c cocoa powder

wet ingredients:

1t vanilla extract

2 eggs

1 stick(1/2c) butter (melted)

1 c stout  (I use Guinness) 

2oz whiskey (I use Jameson)

Two hours later: We're almost ready to begin. If you want to do this with the kids and keep control, you can mise en place, French for "dirty more dishes." I kid, it roughly translates to, "everything in its place." you measure out each ingredient and be ready to go to maximize time/efficiency. It's great if your kids, like mine, get upset if the measuring utensils they're each using are different sizes. More dishes, but often less fighting. Your call :) I'm sharing the kitchen with my mom so I did the dry ingredients and the boys will finish when my sister's get here. Just take a large mixing bowl and in any order you want add the dry ingredients.

Thirty minutes later: Caffeine is an important step. I'm drinking a large Kiwi Apple red bull. Coffee or tea works too (no one will judge if you put a shot of whiskey or Irish cream in your drink).

Two hours later: still no cupcakes, the youngest and I are at home while the rest of the family went to listen to a drum and pipe band at a local restaurant/pub. The youngest is inconsolable because he's 5 and overtired. So he's hiding in his boys club fort watching YouTube videos on my phone. While he's doing that, I'll prep the wet ingredients. The great thing about this taking longer than it usually does is the stout, eggs, and butter are room temp. That can be helpful for the recipe (however it isn't necessary).

An hour later: So the boys decided they don't want to bake. I'm a huge proponent of giving children a voice and making sure they're comfortable listening to their bodies, their needs, and voicing those needs.  The eggs, Guinness, vanilla, and whiskey is in a glass measuring cup. I gave the butter 20 seconds in the microwave to melt it and ease mixing though since it was room temp I could've skipped this step.

I'm laughing hard right now. As I was scraping the butter into the mixing bowl, I dropped it and batter splashed out. It's a mess, lucky my sister's German short hair pointer, Dexter, is here to aid with the clean up (don't worry he didn't get any chocolate but he lapped up a couple small drops of melted butter.)

Everything is in the bowl and mixed, time to add it to greased/lined muffin tins. (You can throw in a cake tin if you don't own muffin tins).

Once you load the batter put it in the oven at 350.

The boys are interested again so they'll be helping with the frosting while the cupcakes bake.

Buttercream recipe:

Fun fact I never measure frosting in our test kitchen.

Recipe:

2 1/2c Powder sugar

1/2t salt

2t vanilla

1 1/2c butter

1/3c Irish Cream Liquor and a splash for good measure. (I'm using Brady's)

Dump it in a bowl and mix. When you do it this way, the alcohol isn't burned off so perhaps you/we shouldn't let the kiddos eat this. For the kid friendly version of this frosting get 1T Irish Cream flavoring and 1/3c of milk.

I couldn't find my piping bag so I put the frosting in a Ziploc bag and cut the tip off. 

The next day: Getting back to this post. The cupcakes were fantastic, the night was wonderful. We listened to good music, ate great food, and enjoyed each other's company. Hope you had a fantastic day too.