Tips on Adding Booze to Cupcakes
Adding alcohol to cupcakes can turn a simple recipe into something truly sophisticated. It’s important to get the balance between batter and booze right, and sometimes it’s better to focus on spiking the icing to get the right level of flavour and texture in the whole cake.
Standard Cupcake Recipe
This is a simple but tasty recipe that allows you to play around a lot with the added ingredients. Because these cakes take only fifteen minutes to prepare and a similar amount of time to bake, you have plenty of opportunity to try some variations without spending all day in the kitchen.To make twelve cupcakes.
Ingredients
- 100g softened butter or baking margarine (don’t use low fat spreads as they don’t have enough fat content to bake well)
- 100g caster sugar
- 100g self-raising flour
- 2 eggs – lightly beaten
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or chosen alcohol (see variations below)
Method
Preheat the oven to 160°C or Gas 5. Set out 12 cupcake cases, or use silicone cupcake trays if you prefer them.Blend fat, sugar, eggs and flour together, then add the vanilla extract, folding it through the rest of the mixture. You’re aiming for a soft dropping consistency so if your mixture seems a little dry at this point, add a teaspoon of lukewarm water and fold in.
Bake for between ten and twenty minutes (usually the right time is about fifteen minutes but different alcohols change the baking time of the cakes) checking at the ten minute point by inserting a cocktail stick into the highest part of one of the cupcakes. If it comes out clean, the cakes are cooked but if it has wet mixture along it, then the cakes need a few minutes more.
When cooked, lift the cakes, in their cases, out of the tin and leave on a wire rack.
Simple Icing
This cupcake topping is the perfect vehicle for the addition of alcohol.- 140 grams butter
- 280 grams icing sugar
- 1-2 teaspoons liquid flavouring.
Method
In a large bowl, beat butter until soft and add icing sugar and alcohol as detailed below.Variations
Some recipes lend themselves more naturally to cupcakes than others, and once you’ve got the basic idea you can experiment with your favourite liqueurs and alcohols to create new tastes.
