New Cake Recipe: Irish Cream Cake

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day last week I made some Irish Cream cupcakes. I had made Irish cream cake before but in the past I always used all natural extract to get the flavor. Even though the extract was not artificial, I didn’t feel like the resulting flavor was as true to real Irish cream as I would like.

So I decided to buy the good stuff, Bailey’s Irish Cream, and got to baking. Bailey’s is considered to be the first Irish Cream on the market. It was invented by Gilbys of Ireland in 1974. It “…is a perfect marriage of fresh, premium quality Irish dairy cream, finest spirits, Irish whiskey and a proprietary recipe of chocolate flavors”*. I have tried other brands of Irish Creams that are on the market, but Bailey’s has the best flavor by far.

My Irish Cream cake is made using about 3/4 of a cup of Bailey’s Irish cream. I also add a little coffee to the cake batter because I’ve always felt that coffee pairs very nicely with Irish Cream. I’m also very fond of Bailey’s brand coffee creamers so I highly recommend trying them if you haven’t.  I actually made the Irish Cream cake twice last week. I felt the first batch could have used a little more Irish Cream flavor so I bumped up the amount from half a cup to 3/4 of a cup. I also put a bit of Irish cream in the frosting :O) The final result was very tasty, and the flavor is much more natural and robust then when I used the Irish Cream extract.

*Quote taken from Baileys.com