Chocolate Buttery Nipple Cupcakes (aka Steelers Cupcakes!)

For those of you who don't know, I'm a huge, HUGE Pittsburgh Steelers fan. And yes, that's a football team. I've been a fan for years now and as last year's football season rolled around I began thinking about making Steelers-inspired cupcakes. Unfortunately, this was around the time that the Steelers were on a 5-game losing streak so I lost motivation pretty quickly.

Well now it's 2010 and the Steelers are not sucking so I figured it was probably wise to make these cupcakes as early in the season as possible. Somewhere around the same time, I got a hankering for a drink that I haven't had since college. A Buttery Nipple. It's not the most PC name, but hey, you gotta be over 21 to have a drink, right? (18 if you're in the Bahamas...orrrr you at least need to be tall enough to reach the bar.) So hopefully you can handle the word "nipple". A Buttery Nipple is a drink which consists of a 1:1 ratio of Bailey's Irish Cream (which I believe could be one of the nectar of the gods) and Butterscotch Schnapps. Enjoy chilled over a few ice cubes. But let's get back to talking about cupcakes.

Since the Steelers' colors are black and gold, I decided to make a chocolate cupcake with a goldish-yellow frosting. Since my tried and true recipe for chocolate cupcakes comes from Hershey's I decided to stick with a sure thing. The frosting for the cupcakes is already relatively pale as-is, so I picked up some yellow food coloring and tossed that suckerin. Seriously, I stopped counting drops after I reached 30.

HERSHEY'S "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake
(makes ~24 cupcakes)

• 2 cups sugar
• 1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup boiling water

1) Heat oven to 350°F. Line muffin cups (2-1/2 inches in diameter) with paper bake cups.

2) Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla in mixing bowl.

3) In another bowl, stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

4) With the mixer on medium speed, gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in several increments. Mix ingredients together for another 2 minutes to blend completely.

5) Stir in boiling water. The batter will be thin.

6) Pour batter into cupcake liners. Fill cups 2/3 full with batter.

7) Bake 22 to 25 minutes. Cool completely. Frost with Buttery Nipple Frosting (recipe below).

Buttery Nipple Frosting
adapted from Smitten Kitchen's Bailey's frosting

• 4 - 5 cups confections sugar
• 2 sticks (1 cup or 8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 3 tbsps Baileys Irish Cream
• 3 tbsps Butterscotch Schnapps
• yellow food coloring (optional if you're not a Steelers fan)

Note: I actually doubled this recipe so I would have enough frosting to pipe onto the cupcakes. If you're planning on spreading the frosting onto your cupcakes, you can cut this recipe in half.

1) Whip the butter using an electric or hand mixer for several minutes. You want the butter to look almost white and be very light and fluffy.

2) Slowly add the powdered sugar, a few tablespoons at a time. Slowly.

3) When the frosting is thick, drizzle in the Baileys and Butterscotch schnapps. Whip until combined. If the frosting is too thin at this point, add another spoonful or two of powdered sugar.

4) Add yellow food coloring, if desired. For those Steeler fans out there: I really did add over 30 drops of yellow food coloring to get the perfect Steeler gold.

5) Pipe or spread on the cupcakes.

As you can see, I chose to pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes. The choice decoration consisted of the letters S-T-E-E-L-E-R-S and 6-X (the Steelers have won the Superbowl 6 times which is kind of a big deal since no other NFL team has ever done that). Then there were some extra cupcakes on which I just practiced using that darn star tip.

Let's discuss the taste of these boozy cupcakes. I love the chocolate cake, first of all. The recipe calls for oil, so it has the perfect level of moist-ness and the Hershey's chocolate makes it super chocolate-y. The frosting is smooth and most definitely reminds me of downing a Buttery Nipple drink. I guess "eating" would be more appropriate? In any case, you should try this out! I also took the liberty of taking copious amount of pictures which you can find below with comments. Enjoy!

The 6X cupcakes

Spell it out! (Don't mind that bottle of tonic in the background.)

The Steelers cupcakes - all packed up and ready to head to the Steelers bar

How about a closeup?

Star tip practice

Made it to the bar safely. Surrounded by Terrible Towels and Steeler cars.