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St. Patrick's Day

Yes, I am wearing green today and with reason.  Dad recalls the story of one of his sets of grandparents leaving Ireland on a ship to honeymoon in the U.S.  The voyage was so bad my great grandmother vowed to never sail back, and they didn't.   I am legitimately Irish - one-eight, and even although the name Flagel doesn't directly conger up Irish, there's a wee bit of Irish in me.

Besides wearing green, there were Irish cupcakes made to take to my former colleagues at work today.  These cupcakes include not only Guinness, but also Irish whiskey and Bailey's Irish Cream.  Now before you ponder how much alcohol one is consuming in eating one cupcake let me be clear both the Guinness and whiskey are cooked meaning there's little or no alcohol left, only flavor.   Here's the recipe if you are interested.  They are called Chocolate Beer Cupcakes With Whiskey Filling And Irish Cream Icing and I can assume someone had a lot of fun practicing as they came up with appropriate proportions.  Even I had to down the remaining Guinness before it went flat!

The Guinness is added to a chocolate cupcake batter and the beer adds a subtle richness to the chocolate, but then so does the sour cream.  The recipe makes 24 cupcakes and I would make these again because of their yumminess.  Then chocolate and whiskey are melted together in cream to create a ganache which is placed inside the cupcake.  My apple corer was put to use to create the holes and the ¨cores¨ allowed for me to taste the cake.  Certainly I didn't want my former co-workers to eat something unworthy.  Finally, Irish Cream is added to a basic butter cream frosting, which I happened to tint green.  As you can imagine this is a wonder combination.  And when you add it all together you get this:


Baked, cored and filled with ganache

All dressed up in their Irish cream frosting

Frank was willing to pose, thank you

Those at work seemed to be OK with the slight bit of kick they got with no complaints about the alcohol.

Need just a bit more Irish fun?  Click the link at the end of this sentence for one last 30 second jolt of St. Patrick's day fun with 20 Irish dancing teddy bears or this 2 minute video from the Muppets singing Danny Boy.  Enjoy the day!

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