Chocolate Cupcakes with Baileys-Caramel-Chocolate Icing

If you're anything like me, cold weather means lots of warm food and baking! I am a huge chocolate lover, especially when it comes to cake. Pile in as much chocolate as you can, and I could still go for more. The Hersheys Chocolate Cake recipe should become your go-to for chocolate cake. It is soft, extra moist and light. You could really slab any kind of icing on and it would taste good, but I had a craving for chocolate icing, which gave me a chance to try Beantown Bakers Dark Chocolate Icing Recipe. I tweaked it just a touch and it came out perfect. The addition of baileys makes it seem more festive to me also, I'm not sure why but I fel like people have dessert drinks more during the Holidays. My mom made a vanilla icing and I devoured 3 mini cupcakes almost immediately! These should definitely go on your to-bake list for the Holiday season.


HERSHEY's Chocolate Cake
2 cups sugar
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water
Heat oven to 350°F. Line cupcake pans with baking cups.

Combine sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla. Beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water, note that the batter will be very thin. I used a scoop to ladle the batter into a measuring cup, then poured into the cupcake liners, about 2/3 of the way full.

Bake 22 - 25 minutes. Cool and ice!

Baileys-Caramel-Chocolate Icing (from Beantown Baker)
6 Tbsp butter, softened

2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups confectioners sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/3 cup + 1 tsp Caramel Baileys
Cream butter and vanilla.

In a separate bowl, combine sugar and cocoa powder. Add dry ingredients to the creamed butter and vanilla.
Add Baileys in 2 parts, mixing in between additions until smooth.