Something For The Weekend - Wine Cupcakes

I love a cupcake as much as anyone - but sometimes you just need to experiment and perhaps make them a little more adult oriented. With wine. These wine cupcakes were baked for a friends birthday and have one cup of wine between the icing and the cake mixture. While you'd need a lot of them to get tipsy you can certainly taste the wine kind of in a chocolate liquor way, but nicer. Much nicer. I owe the recipe to Betty Crocker who also has a recipe I must try for Margarita cupcakes - she lives on the wild side that Betty.

Zinfandel Wine cupcakes - makes around 24

Ingredients 

For the cupcakes;

• 1 box of devils food mix
• 3/4 of a cup of water
• 1/2 a cup of Zinfandel wine
• 1/3 of a cup of vegetable oil
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup of chocolate chips

And the icing;

• 6 cups of shifted icing [confectioners] sugar
• 1/3 of a cup of softened butter
• 1/3 of a cup of baking cocoa
• 1/2 a cup of Zinfandel wine

Taking the mix of the devils food, beat together with the water, wine, oil and eggs for a good 30 seconds, increasing to a high speed for a further two minutes. Beat in the chocolate chips before dividing into the bun cases.

Place in a preheated 350F oven, bake for 20/22 minutes. Cooling completely before icing.

Mix the powdered sugar, cocoa, butter with a mixture until well blended. Pour the wine in slowly, if the frosting remains too thick add more wine a little at a time. Frost your cupcakes as desired.  

They taste as good as they look. If I say so myself. I hope you're all tempted!