Super Bowl XLV

Tisk, tisk, I'm writing about Super Bowl in April.  Shame on me, it's been a while!  Maybe I'll try to blame it on taking this long to get over the ultimate sell-out of watching Guns N' Roses' Slash play with the Black Eyed Peas at the half time show... So.  Very.  Sad.

I've had my eye on a recipe for Irish Car Bomb cupcakes for a while.  I got the idea from this book, Who You Callin' Cupcake?  A wonderful little recipe book with crazy cupcake recipes.  You might be asking yourself, "what do Irish Car Bombs have to do with the super Bowl?"  Nothing. It really was just an excuse to finally make them.  No one at the party questioned the theme and judging from the lack of left-overs, I'd say they were a big hit.

I modified the recipe a bit by using my go-to Sour Cream Chocolate Cupcake recipe from The Cake Mix Doctor and made them mini... that makes them guilt free... or so I like to tell myself.  Then I soaked them in whiskey, spread some chocolate whiskey ganache on them and topped them off with Bailey's Irish Cream chocolate buttercream icing.  And, tada....

Oh yes, and my favorite part - the footballs are made from caramels and the laces are piped white chocolate.  You can see the schmear of chocolate whiskey ganache just sticking out from under the buttercream.

And since there were going to be kids attending the party, I made some kid-friendly, plain chocolate and vanilla butercream minis for them:

I added the green sprinkles in an attempt to make somewhat of a connection to the game and in defiance of the Steelers making it to the Super Bowl over the Ravens once again... grrrr...

Here's a photo of the whole lot:

I'd like to give a little shout-out to "Mom" Harris who helped me roll and pipe the footballs until 3am the night before!  Thanks!