These cupcakes I made for Easter Sunday. While I fully recognize it's importance as a religious holiday, I also view it as another opportunity to pull out the KitchenAid Mixer, aka my best friend in the whole wide world. Now for this particular holiday I decided on Brown Sugar Pound Cakes and used some Irish Cream leftover in the refrigerator to make the buttercream. Of course I dyed it pastel green for good measure... I wanted them to look festive!
So here's the problem with pound cake - I was spoiled for 18 long years and was treated to the best pound cake in world. Now nothing (I mean nothing! Not even one of my own creations!) can possibly compare to the cakes my grandmother used to make. I remember every time we arrived at their farm house (they literally lived on a farm) I would run into the kitchen following the scent of sugar and butter baking in the oven. On the rare occasion my nose did not pick up this wonderful scent, I headed instead for dining and checked under the lid on the cake plate. And 9 times out of 10.... VOILA! There was a perfectly moist and delicious pound cake.
Hmm. We'll since I have been eloquently waxing on about this cake you might wonder why I did not recreate it for an Easter treat instead of using a Martha Stewart impostor recipe. There are two reasons. The first is that I am thoroughly convinced that even if I attempted to make a pound cake with the exact recipe my grandmother wrote years ago, it would still not even come close. The other reason is... I just plain didn't think about it. I want to make cupcakes and flipping through my Martha Stewart cupcake book I found this recipe and it seemed to be the easiest one in the book. So naturally I jumped into action and set the oven to "BAKE".
The original recipe calls for brown butter glaze which I am sure is delicious but I really wanted to use some Irish Cream. Which I did. Technically, these cupcakes I made are
Martha's idea of St. Patrick's day cupcakes but I obviously missed that holiday. They're green and everything! I didn't even think of that. Oops. Anyway, without further ado, here is the recipe. Nothing spectacular I assure you, but fairly good as fair as cupcake pound cakes go (not that I have anything to compare them too...). The frosting makes them in this case, I think.
Brown Sugar Pound Cupcakes
Yield: 28
3 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 sticks butter, room temp
2 1/4 cups packed brown sugar
4 large eggs, room temp
3/4 cup buttermilk (I never seem to have buttermilk and if you don't either just use 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and add whatever milk you have to that until you have 3/4 cups of weird lemon-y milk instead!)
1. Preheat oven to 325. Line muffin tins or prepare them with a nonstick cooking spray. Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl.
2. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating after each addition.
3. Add dry ingredients to butter mixture in 3 additions, alternating with additions of buttermilk. Fill each tin until 3/4 full.
4. Bake cupcakes roughly 20 minutes.While they cool... prepare the Irish cream frosting!!
Irish Cream Buttercream
4 cups confections sugar
1 stick butter, room temp
3 to 4 tablespoons Baileys (we never have Baileys... it's another brand but obviously works just as well. Also, I'm pretty sure I used more than 3 or 4 tablespoons... hmmm.)
1. Whip the butter until it is light and fluffy and add the confectioners sugar a little bit at a time. 2. When the frosting looks thick slowly add in the Irish Cream and whip until combined. If this has made the frosting too thin you can easily mix in more powdered sugar.
