guinness and chocolate cupcakes

i baked guinness and chocolate buns today, they turned out lovely! i made some vanilla creme frosting to go with them, german style, which involves custard powder, milk, sugar, butter and icing sugar and makes for a lovely light but buttery topping. i'm not a hundred percent sure if it's ideal for the very rich chocolate buns, maybe a dark chocolate glaze would be better? maybe i plain buns would be better suited to the buttercreme?

either way, tomorrow morning i'm planning to ice the buns and bring them along to the mammies and babies coffee morning. the girls and babas are a lovely bunch and we have great chats, but the surroundings are grim (the local pub, smelling of shake'n'vac, selling instant coffee and tea) so i think some little cakes with sweet icing and sprinkles will lighten things up a little! if i have time i'll take a picture!

i interpreted several chocolate and guinness cake recipes (nigella has one, delia too) and made up my own version. recipes are such a mine field, all the different measurements, and the fact that to my german palate a lot of american and english baking tastes too sweet, so i often mess with sugar amounts. i think the difference is that in germany we eat cakes in the afternoon, several hours after lunch as a seperate meal, you'd have a big piece of cake, or two, with some coffee, whereas in a lot of other countries cakes are dessert, a small sweet treat directly after the meal.

don't get me wrong, germans have desserts, too, but they tend to be served in little glass bowls: custard and fruit, pudding and cream, yoghurt, ice cream... mmmh, i must write a post about all my favourite desserts from home, we had dessert with every dinner (lunch)!