I'm what they call a cupcake triple threat. I love to bake them, decorate them, and eat them. My absolute favorite is chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream frosting. Zach usually has trouble remembering my favorite, so on my birthday he always orders every possibly combination from the bakery. Even if he forgets my favorite, I can't get mad at his solution. He has it covered. It works, there is always at least one chocolate flavored cupcake with buttercream frosting in the bunch.
I decided to try a new recipe that has some additional ingredients aside from cocoa powder. The original recipe I referred to calls for walnuts. I swapped the walnuts with pistachios; a nut I like much more. I paired the chocolate pistachio with a buttercream frosting and finished the cupcakes off with Nutcracker decorations and all the winter white fairyesque toppings you can imagine. Delightful! xo RCN
Cupcake Recipe (makes one dozen cupcakes):
1 cup of pistachios (original recipe calls for 1 heaping cup of walnuts)
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 cups water
Preheat oven to 350F and prep cupcake tin with cupcake liners. Grind pistachios in blender or food processor. I mixed them in a blender until they were very fine and added 1 teaspoon of water into the nuts while I mixed them.
Mix flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt in small bowl, set aside. Then in a larger bowl, whisk finely ground pistachios with sugar until blended. Add one egg at a time, followed by the vanilla extract. Sift a third of the cocoa/flour mixture into the pistachio mixture. Add 1/2 the water, continue alternating dry ingredients and water until all combined, ending with dry ingredients. Scoop the mixture into the cupcake liners and bake for about 20-25 minutes. I always use the toothpick method to help determine when my cupcakes are done. If you insert a toothpick into center of cake and it comes out clean, then finito!
Buttercream Recipe:
1 stick of salted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 small box of confectioners sugar
1 1/2 Tablespoons of Milk
Soften butter to room temp and then mix until fluffy with wooden spoon or hand mixer. Add vanilla and continue to mix. Sift in the confectioners sugar and continue to mix all ingredients. Lastly, add the milk. You can always add more milk at the end if you need to make the buttercream softer. I usually like buttercream relatively thick.
Decorations:
A pinch of unsweetened coconut per cupcake
A few handfuls of vanilla chips and marshmallows divided between all cupcakes
A sprinkle of pearlized Wilton decorative candy balls per cupcake
Meri Meri cupcake kit - I used the Nutcracker kit which is sold out of a few stores, but available on ebay. I also recently saw this set at Homegoods. If you are still looking for something holiday, Meri Meri still has an adorable santa/reindeer kit available online HERE.
Meri Meri has some of the most adorable cupcake kits, you can find them all HERE.
