Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes with Baileys Frosting

Looking for the PERFECT dessert for St. Patrick’s Day that calls for some well-known ingredients? Fluffy, chocolatey Guinness Cupcakes with Baileys Frosting are a decadent treat that were made to share. Makes 21 cupcakes.

Love St. Patrick’s Day celebrations at home? Don’t skip Mashed Potato Beef Hand Pies and Irish Mule!

2021 update: These Guinness Chocolate Cupcakes were originally published on March 14, 2012. The post was updated with new images, plus additional tips and tricks, in January 2021.

Since living in Baton Rouge during college, I became a fan of St. Patrick’s Day and all the shenanigans it encompasses.

I attended my first Wearin’ of the Green during college, and when we moved back to Baton Rouge after our stint in Nashville, I was overjoyed to celebrate this gloriously green holiday again.

The added bonus was we had various friends who lived on the parade route, all of whom hosted parties. Which meant we spent an entire Saturday bouncing from party to party and offering boozy cupcakes to our cohorts. As you do. 😉

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Why I love this recipe:

These Guinness Cupcakes have wonderful chocolate flavor. They’re also super moist, and paired with the Bailey’s Irish Cream frosting? Ooooooh boy, are they good.

They’re also totally from scratch, so you will find NO cake mix here.

These are a spin off a popular “bomb shot” and transformed into a decadent chocolate dessert. (You could call them Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes, though I really dislike this name.)

What makes this recipe so special?

• The chocolate is wonderfully rich without being terribly dense or stodgy.
• The frosting, made with Irish cream, is delightfully creamy.
• When put together, these are a mouth full of heavenly flavors.

Please note that these cupcakes and their frosting are not kid-friendly since they involve alcohol. They are perfect for your favorite beer drinker, though they don’t have a strong beer flavor.

Other St. Patrick’s Day desserts we love: No Churn Guinness Brownie Ice Cream | Irish Cream Biscuits with Boozy Chocolate Ganache | Irish Mule | Chocolate Chip Irish Cream Pound Cake | Guinness Brownies with Cream Cheese Frosting Drizzle

What you need to make this recipe:

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• Cupcake tin or muffin tin
• Glass bowls
• An electric mixer, like a hand mixer or a stand mixer
• Cookie scoop for scooping the batter into the cupcake tins. Trust me when I say this makes it so much easier and the cupcakes more even!
• Green cupcake liners to make ’em extra festive!
• Wire cooling rack

Here is what you need to grab from the grocery store:

• All-purpose flour — we keep unbleached in our house, but the regular kind is A-OK, too.
• Leaveners — we’re using a combination of baking soda and baking powder. Make sure yours are fresh.
• Kosher salt — medium-grain kosher salt is my go-to for cooking. Diamond Crystal is my favorite brand. Another similarly sized salt could work, like sea salt. Table salt is saltier.
• Unsweetened cocoa powder — NOT Dutch process, so be sure to read your cocoa powder’s label
• Eggs — large eggs from the grocery store is what I purchase.
• Mascarpone cheese — this creamy Italian cheese can usually be found in the dairy section with fresh mozzarella and ricotta
• Granulated sugar — also known as white sugar, this is the sweetener for our chocolate cake base.
• Guinness Extra Stout Beer — or another stout beer of your choosing. This makes for the most decadent, moist cupcakes with a rich chocolate flavor. Stout beer helps pronounce the chocolate flavor, much in the same way that coffee does with many chocolate desserts.
• Bailey’s Irish Cream — or another brand of Irish Cream or the homemade variety, if you prefer
• Powdered sugar — also known as confectioners’ sugar, this is the sweetener used in our frosting recipe.

How to Make Guinness Cupcakes

Preheat your oven, and line the cupcake tin with cupcake liners because these will make your job go by faster once you get the cupcakes made. Set ’em aside to make the cupcake batter.

Combine flour, soda, powder, salt and cocoa powder in a large mixing bowl. Whisk them together until incorporated, then set them aside.

Cream the eggs with the mascarpone and sugar with a hand mixer or in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Start at a low speed, and turn up the speed as you go. The eggs will become a light yellow color as these ingredients are incorporated.

Pour in the Guinness to the egg mixture, and stir with a rubber spatula until combined.

Drizzle the wet ingredients (the beer mixture) into the dry ingredients (the flour mixture), and whisk ’em together until combined. You’ll see LOTS of air bubbles here.

Use a cookie scoop or a spoon to scoop cupcake batter into the prepared liners.

Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Let the cupcakes cool completely on a wire rack while you make the frosting.

How to make Baileys Frosting

You’re going to use another large bowl to make the frosting. In it, combine the mascarpone, Irish cream and powdered sugar, and whip them together using a hand mixer. 

Add the powdered sugar incrementally so that you don’t get powdered sugar spray all over you, but I’ve found that it’s not too bad (or bad at all!) if your bowl is large enough.

You’re going to make sure that the frosting is extremely creamy before you dollop it on top of the cupcake.

You can also use a pastry bag or piping bag to swirl the frosting onto the cupcakes, too, if that’s more your speed. Please note that this is a softer frosting, so it might not hold its shape as well as classic piped frosting recipes.

Decorate the beer cupcake recipe however you see fit — you can see that we dig sprinkles in our house, but you could garnish with a chocolate-dipped pretzel or even a drizzle of your favorite caramel sauce — and serve ’em up!

Erin’s Easy Entertaining Tips

Chocolate Beer Cupcakes are the perfect dessert to bring to or have at your St. Patrick’s Day party because they are incredibly festive and also delicious!

As always, take a breath before you host, and planning ahead can save you a lot of stress and handwringing.

Here are some of my suggestions for throwing a fabulous St. Patrick’s Day party with these moist chocolate cupcakes:

• Bake the cupcakes a day before the festivities. Store them unfrosted and covered at room temperature overnight.
• Make the Baileys frosting just before guests arrive or make it in advance and store in the fridge. Don’t frost the cupcakes yet, though! If you’re storing it in the fridge, it might thicken up, so add 1-2 tablespoons of milk to thin it out before piping/smearing onto the cupcakes.
• Swap out the frosting. Use a classic vanilla cream cheese frosting or a chocolate buttercream if you prefer.
• Let your guests decorate ’em! It’s fun to make your own cupcake and dictate how much (or little) Baileys frosting it has, as well as the decor. If you’re comfortable with it and think your guests might enjoy it, let them do this step and give them some fun sprinkles to add for a festive color.
• Looking for more St. Patrick’s Day entertaining information? Check out St. Patrick’s Day Party Food for inspiration, as well as head on over to the following recipes: Homemade Irish Cream Liqueur, Lucky Charms Cookies and Irish Corned Beef Nacho Bites!

Frequently Asked Questions

Tips and Tricks for the BEST St. Patrick’s Day Cupcakes

• Can’t find crema di mascarpone? Use cream cheese or sour cream instead. Just makes sure it’s at room temperature!
• Not a Guinness fan? Swap it for another (unflavored) stout beer. While a flavored stout is tasty, we don’t want whatever the flavor is to take away from the chocolatey deliciousness of these cupcakes.
• Make the Baileys Frosting in advance, and store it in the fridge! Since it’s dairy-heavy, it should not sit out more than a few hours.

Here’s how you can make these awesome cupcakes for your shindig…