Chocolate Mint Bailey's Cake

Last weekend my good friend Jacqui was up for a visit from Saigon, and as Thursday was her birthday, she decided it would be a weekend of splurging on herself. The perfect way to spend a birthday, if you ask me!

 

She started off the weekend by booking a room at the Intercontinental Hotel, with a balcony right out over the water on West Lake. We picked up a few beers (from a shop outside; we're way too cheap to pay for Intercontinental beers!) and the other Jacqui and I went to hang with her and Kim on the balcony for a sunset.

Proof that Kim can not take a serious picture!

Me, enjoying a beer and the view.

Around sunset, they brought Jacqui a cake for her birthday! No, this is not the Chocolate Mint Bailey's one that I'm promising...you have to wait for that. This one was passion fruit mousse, and also quite delicious!

After such a beautiful evening, what did it do? Yep. It rained. Not just any rain, but nonstop, loud torrential rain that kept everyone inside all day, thwarting all of our plans for a nice brunch, shooting golf balls into West Lake, and trying many different beers at the "Beer Temple". 

On a rainy Saturday when I'm stuck inside, what am I going to do? Bake, obviously. Especially when I had such high hopes for the rain to stop so I could go out that night. I was sitting here thinking through all of the ingredients I already had in my cupboards because going out just wasn't an option, when I realized I had an entire bottle of Chocolate Mint Bailey's sitting right here, as yet unopened. 

I quickly went searching online for a cake recipe and found this one at Baking Bites. The recipe is for cupcakes, but I used my 9-inch round cake pan instead. The only other change I made was where it asked for 1/2 cup of Bailey's and 1/4 cup of milk, I thought, WHY? and just used 3/4 cup of Bailey's. 

 

I coated it in a mint icing and then melted some semi-sweet chocolate with some butter and drizzled that over the top.

When the rain finally stopped and we went for a birthday brunch Dim Sum at the Sofitel on Sunday, I took this along and it was a big hit!

The chocolate chips inside make it just chocolatey enough and the Bailey's flavour came through wonderfully. I thought it was perhaps a little on the dry side, but that's probably due to me not getting the baking temperature and time quite right in the conversion from cupcakes to cake. No one else seemed to notice and it was still extremely yummy!

 

Look, even the stripy tiger wants some of the stripy cake!