Chocolate Stout Cupcakes with Vanilla Stout Buttercream

We’ve enjoyed Grace Neil’s Chocolate and Guinness Brownies from Margaret Johnson’s Irish Table cookbook for years now. I never thought I’d say this, but I found something even better”these. That’s a big compliment, since I love the brownies. All my eager tasters agreed they were great. I was a bit skeptical when they came out of the oven, since they hadn’t fully risen to the tops of my jumbo muffin tins and there was a small indentation in the tops of each one. Not sure if that’s the way they were supposed to be, but it made the perfect place for that scoop of icing, and they tasted heavenly. I couldn’t find jumbo muffin liners in the two stores I visited, so I sprayed my tins with baking spray. The muffins came out perfect. I liked the ease of mixing up the muffin batter with a whisk and the frosting with the electric mixer. I wasn’t really clear on how to "shine” the frosting, but my tasters enjoyed them with the frosting scooped on with the ice cream scoop as suggested. I did use the optional crushed chocolate-covered pretzels sprinkled on top of the frosting, which, as they say, was icing on the cake. I’ll definitely be making these again.