Baileys Irish Cream

I know St. Patrick’s Day is still a little over a week away but I had to share this with you now so you have time to go out and buy the ingredients to make this yourself. You will thank me.

Every now and then I have a flash of semi-brilliance. Why this occurs when I am staring at my collection of liquor bottles and not when I am facing down a Statistics exam, I will never know. (Seriously, what crackhead made up statistics?)

Anyway, as I was waiting for the timer to go off on the cookies I am baking for Operation Cookie Takeover (more on that later) I stood staring at my booze shelf (okay, shelves) and thinking about how I wanted to make an Irish Potato cocktail. All of the recipes I had found contained Baileys Irish Cream, coconut rum or vodka, and cinnamon schanpps or Goldschlager. Meatloaf says two out of three ain’t bad, but my lack of the cinnamon booze was not going to make me an Irish Potato cocktail.

Then I saw my bottle of Rumchata. I thought to myself, Not only does it have a lovely cinnamon flavor – it has the PERFECT cinnamon flavor! Synapses firing, I got to work at mixing up this Irish beauty…

The Drunken Irish Potato

2 oz Rumchata
1 oz Parrot Bay Coconut Rum
2 oz Baileys Irish Cream
ice

Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker, shake, drink, make another!

If you are having a St. Patrick’s Day party you should definitely serve this, and if you are hitting the bars – tell the bartender how to make this (and feel free to direct them to my blog for more fabulous ideas!). If you are going to drink nothing but beer, I don’t understand you, but have fun anyway. All of you, take a cab home.

Last night I was making cupcakes for a birthday at the office. I was just going to do something plain, so I grabbed a box of Devils Food cake mix and dumped all the ingredients into a mixing bowl. It was after this that I was struck with the idea to make Mudslide cupcakes. Not sure why, but I have had Applebee’s giant ass (because it’s huge AND contributes to one having a giant ass) Mudslides on the brain lately.

Mucho size Mudslide from Applebee's — Mucho size Mudslide from Applebee’s (Photo credit: Newbirth35)

I thought I could kick my craving with some Kahlua and Baileys cupcakes. I didn’t want to add any more liquids to my cupcake batter because I had already put in the required water, eggs and oil so I figured I would just brush the tops of the baked cupcakes with Kahlua and then frost them with a Baileys buttercream. I should have just gone to Applebee’s.

Don’t get me wrong, the cupcakes tasted good but apparently I should have soaked them in Kahlua rather than just brushing the tops with the booze because I tasted no Kahlua. Any good alcoholic knows that a Mudslide contains Kahlua. : (

Another little snafu I ran into was the icing. I used a recipe I found online. It called for two sticks of unsalted butter, three cups of confectioners sugar and three tablespoons of Baileys. I went with this one because I didn’t have any more sticks of shortening, which I usually use when I make my icing. I won’t tell you where I got the recipe from because it sucked!! When I did my requisite taste test, all I could taste was butter with a hint of Irish Cream. BLEH.

I added another cup of confectioners sugar and then ANOTHER.

Five cups got the job done and the finished product was pretty good; it just wasn’t what I had hoped for. So now I have eaten a cupcake that will go straight to my thighs, and I still need to hit up Applebee’s for a Mudslide.