Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes

It seems that the Chocolate Guinness Cake is becoming my signature cake. Not just that I have made it a few times now but that it is just yummy and I guess that is why I keep going back to it. There may be an Irish thing too, can't be sure about that though....
A few weeks ago someone posted a link on facebook to a Guinness Cupcake round-up which I duly perused, something to try at a later date. Last weekend became that later date.
We had a BBQ with some friends and as well as making many salads (Ottolenghi to the rescue) I also made a chocolate Brioche, vanilla fairy cakes for the kids (although many adults seemed to be attracted to the jelly tot/smartie be-decked cakes!) and for the adults Chocolate Guinness cupcakes. I went back to the round-up but in the end I used Nigella's Feast recipe, why mess with the classic?
I wanted to make 2 dozen cakes and I figured the recipe in Feast for a 23cm cake would probably do the trick. The batter is very wet so I put it in a jug and poured it into the cases, about three quarters of the way, and it made 24 with a little dribble to spare. They cooked for 20 minutes @ 200 degrees, left to cool in the tin for 10 minutes an then cooled completely on my grill tray. I had some cupcake boxes leftover from the dog cupcakes and used them to store overnight and iced them the morning of the the BBQ.
I made the amount of icing in the recipe and wasn't sure if it would be enough to pipe icing on to all the cakes so I spread icing on the first 12 cakes with a palatte knife and then piped the other 12.

Once I put the cakes out at the BBQ what followed was an interesting experiment in peoples choices. I told everyone that both batches were exactly the same apart from how they were iced but it was the piped cakes that went first! I have to say they did look prettier than the other ones, nothing like a bit of good piping.

Here's the chocolate brioche I made too....