So, today’s blog is one I’m really excited about because I loved these cupcakes. What do you think of when you think of Christmas? For me an iconic way of feeling festive is with a nice glass of mulled wine. What better flavour for cakes, but I hadn’t really seen many recipes that have tried it, so let’s try Mulled Wine cupcakes. The only way to describe these cupcakes is like Christmas in a cupcake. I used mulled wine syrup in my cakes but you can use mulled wine jam instead. Christmas baking is always my favourite time of the year, even though Christmas might look different this year, there’s nothing stopping you having some baking fun.
Ingredients:
170g self raising flour
170g caster sugar
170g baking butter
3 eggs
2 teaspoons mixed spice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking powder
Mulled wine syrup or jam
250g unsalted butter (softened)
500g icing sugar
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon orange flavouring
1 orange
Cinnamon sticks
Cranberries
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line a cupcake tray with cases. Add the flour, sugar, butter, eggs and baking powder to a bowl and mix together. Mix in the vanilla flavouring and mixed spice to make a smoot batter. I added some mulled wine syrup at this point. Fill the cupcakes 2/3 full and bake for 15-18minutes until golden. You could really smell the mixed spice when they came out the oven. Leave the cakes to cool, during this period I made the dried oranges and buttercream. On a baking tray line with baking paper I cut oranges into quarters and placed them on the tray. I turned the oven down to 120 degrees and dried the oranges for just over an hour and left them to cool.
For the buttercream, I beat the butter for 5-10minutes until it was pale in colour. Gradually add the icing sugar and a dash of milk if its stiff. Add some orange flavouring, I added some burgundy food colouring so it was like wine. Add the buttercream to a piping bag with a star nozzle. I cored the middle of cupcakes and added some mulled wine syrup, you can add some mulled wine jam as an alternative. Pipe the buttercream on to the cakes. For the cranberries I rolled mine in silver lustre so they could be shiny. Decorate the cakes with the dried oranges, cinnamon sticks and cranberries.
I was so excited to try these cupcakes and really wanted to get the perfect picture. I also made these gingerbread cupcakes this week as a little practice for Christmas orders next week. It’s a week until Christmas and my Christmas bakes I wanted to try is slowly going down. I can finally relax on Christmas eve once all my orders have been made. Baking is such an escape for me right now and I’m loving baking and writing recipes so much. I’ve still got so many exciting recipes left to share before the end of the year. I handed my last piece of uni work in for this term so I can fully focus on baking this next week. I plan on doing my Christmas wrapping in between bakes, it’s my least favourite job at Christmas. I hope you have a lovely week getting last minute things sorted for Christmas.
Lots of love,
Hannah xx
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