Luck O' the Irish Cupcakes

Chocolate. Guinness. Bailey's Irish cream. When you marry them all together, you get the ultimate dessert.

Chocolate Guinness cupcakes filled with an super luscious and silky Irish cream chocolate ganache, and topped with an Irish cream buttercream.

To die for.

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Cook Like a Gold Medal Plate Chef, Part II - Quail Challenge

As part of the "Cook Like a Gold Medal Plate Chef" challenge, hosted by foodiePrints, Whisk: A Food Blog and Rachelle Eats Food in honour of the Ottawa Gold Medal Plates that was held last week, bloggers were invited to create their own interpretations of Chefs Matthew Carmichael and sous chef Jonathan Korecki (of Restaurant E18hteen) two dishes they had created in last year's "black box" competition as part of the Canadian Culinary Championships. For the first half of the challenge, I made pan-fried Arctic char with cauliflower puree and fennel confit.

The other main ingredient that was found in their black box was quail. Chefs Carmichael and Korecki lacquered the birds with Indian Pale Ale and soy sauce, served with risotto and garnished with cubed dragon fruit. Us home cooks were allowed to substitute the dragon fruit for a hard Asian pear, which is what I opted to do in order to incorporate more texture and flavour to my dish.

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