Bailey's Flavored EVERYTHING

I am BEYOND excited for St. Patrick's Day this year.

I have always been a birthday person, but this year, I honestly don't care about my birthday (which is April 9, in case you were curious!). I am going in to Baltimore to celebrate this year! Which, to show my age even more, is extra exciting because this is my first St. Patrick's Day of legal drinking age! Anyways, I have a million and a half St. Patrick's Day recipes I want to bake, so I settled on these AWESOME cookies and Irish Car Bomb cupcakes, which I'll make a little bit closer to the holiday.

These little buggers took forever and a year to make! That might also be because I made about 40 of them... But whatever! :) Every single part of them was delicious. Cookie, icing, chocolate. Yum. 

I got the recipe from Buttercream Blondie and followed the directions almost perfectly... except for the waiting for the cookie dough to cool. I'm impatient. So If you're impatient like me, then definitely only bake the cookies for 6-7 minutes, not the 12-13 she suggests.

Baileys Cookies

• 2 sticks unsalted butter, room temp
• 1&1/2 cups sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 1t. vanilla extract
• 4 cups AP flour
• 1T. baking powder
• 1/2t. salt
• 1/2 cup Baileys

1. Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy.
2. Add egg and egg yolk.
3. Mix in vanilla extract.
4. Alternate adding in dries with Baileys till combined.
5. Wrap cookie dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate a few hours to over night.
6. Roll out dough & cut out cookies using a shamrock cookie cutter.
7. Chill cookies at least 30 minutes before baking to keep their shape.
8. Bake at 350 degrees for 12-13 minutes rotating once halfway through.  Start checking them after 10 minutes.  As soon as they get a little blonde on the edges, they're done.

*This recipe yields about 80 shamrock cookies, 40 sandwich cookies.

Baileys Cream Filling

• 2 sticks unsalted butter, room temp
• 2 & 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 6T. Baileys
• 2t. Trablit - you can also use instant espresso powder

1. Cream butter and sugar, adding a little sugar at a time so you don't have a sugar shower.
2. Add extract and Baileys.
3. Fill cooled cookies.

Good as drink is, it ends in thirst, so drink up my friends! Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Cookie Dough Cupcakes!

So many cookie/cupcake crossovers lately! I wanted to finally venture into the world of stuffed cupcakes, so I went with these yummy cookie dough cupcakes. It's a vanilla cupcake with chocolate chips, hollowed out and filled with a cookie dough like filling, then iced with a vanilla buttercream icing, and topped with chocolate chips. Just like chocolate chip cookies!

I'm not going to lie, there isn't much about this recipe that I would change. The only alteration I made was that I halved the recipe, and even then I kept the filling at normal proportion for left overs. I ended up using all of the filling, so either I made the centers too deep or the filling just needs to be doubled if you make the 24 it yields.

I had a fun time icing them too! Don't they look like little roses!?!? :) Also, beware of breaking the cupcake between actually hollowing them, filling them, and otherwise moving them. Their structure isn't as strong as a regular cupcake. 

I got the recipe from TidyMom.net and they were so perfect! Thank you!!

Ingredients

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes
• 3 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1½ cups light brown sugar, packed
• 4 large eggs
• 2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• ¼ tsp. salt
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 cup chocolate chips (semisweet or bittersweet)
Cookie Dough Filling
• 4 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 6 tbsp. light brown sugar, packed
• 1 cup plus 2 tbsp. all-purpose flour
• 7 oz. sweetened condensed milk
• ½ tsp. vanilla extract
• ¼ cup mini semisweet chocolate chips
Cookie Dough Frosting
• 3 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
• ¾ cup light brown sugar, packed
• 3½ cups confectioners’ sugar
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• ¾ tsp. salt
• 3 tbsp. milk
• 2½ tsp. vanilla extract

Instructions

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes
1. preheat the oven to 350° F.
2. Using the paddle attachment on your mixer, combine the butter and brown sugar. Cream together on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, approx 3 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl .
3. Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl.
4. Alternating add the dry ingredients to the mixer bowl with the milk on low speed, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients, mixing each addition just until incorporated.
5. Blend in the vanilla.
6. Fold in the chocolate chips with a spatula.
7. Divide the batter evenly between 24 cupcake liners. Bake for 18-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Cookie Dough Filling
8. Cream butter and sugar in a mixing bowl on medium-high speed until light and fluffy(approx2 minutes).
9. Add flour, sweetened condensed milk and vanilla and beat until smooth.
10. Stir in the chocolate chips.
11. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until the mixture has firmed up a bit, (approx1 hour).
12. After cupcakes have cooled, fill the cupcakes by cutting a cone-shaped portion out of the center of each cupcake. Fill each hole with a chunk of the chilled cookie dough mixture.
Cookie Dough Frosting
13. Beat butter and brown sugar with the paddle attachment on high speed until creamy and fluffy.
14. Mix in the confectioners’ sugar until smooth.
15. Beat in the flour and salt.
16. Mix in the milk and vanilla extract until smooth and combined.

My brother, who is a less than picky eater said these were his favorite cupcakes I've made so far. But the best feedback I got was from my dad! He's not a dessert person, but he claimed these are the BEST cupcakes he's EVER had!!!! :)

I love baking for people...