Pink Champagne Cupcakes

Champagne is linked with festive events such as weddings, birthdays, and New Years Eve. These cupcakes have a generous amount of champagne to flavour both the cupcake and frosting. Pink champagne is slightly sweeter than regular champagne but you can use either. Lightly tint the frosting with a little pink color if you want to follow the pink theme. 

Ingredients

• For the Pink Champagne Cupcakes:
• ¾ cup butter, at room temperature
• 1½ cups granulated sugar
• ½ teaspoon pure almond extract
• 2¾ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 cup pink champagne
• 6 egg whites, at room temperature
•  
• For the Champagne Buttercream Frosting
• 1 cup butter, at room temperature
• 3 cups confectioner’s sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• ¼ cup pink champagne, at room temperature

• Prep Time: 30 minutes
• Cook Time: 20 minutes

• Total Time: 50 minutes
• Yield: 12 cupcakes

 

Preparation

 For the Pink Champagne Cupcakes:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F and place the racks in the middle of the oven.
2. Line 12 muffin tins with paper liners and set the tray aside.
3. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, sugar, and almond extract with electric hand beaters until very light and fluffy, scraping down the sides of the bowl a couple times.
4. In a medium bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together twice to blend very well.

1. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients alternating with the champagne in 5 additions, starting and ending with the dry ingredients. Scrape down the bowl at least twice.
2. In another large stainless steel bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Make sure the hand beaters you use have absolutely no grease on them or the eggs will not whip up.
3. Fold ¼ of the beaten whites into batter to lighten it, and then carefully fold the remaining egg whites into the batter retaining as much volume as possible.
4. Spoon the batter into the cupcake liners so that they are about 2/3 full.
5. Bake the cupcakes until a toothpick inserted into the center of one comes out clean, about 20 minutes.
6. Cool the cupcakes in the tray for 10 minutes and then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely before frosting them.

For the Champagne Buttercream Frosting

1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and confectioner’s sugar until very fluffy, about 3 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl at least once.

1. Beat in the vanilla and champagne until thick and very well blended, scraping down the sides of the bowl at least once.
2. Spoon the frosting into a piping bag with a rosette tip and pipe generous swirls of icing on the cooled cupcakes.
3. Decorate the cupcakes with glittering silver drags, cluster dust, sanding sugar, or nests of caramelized sugar. 

By Michelle Anderson

Cake Decorating Expert, about.com