As you might have read in yesterday’s post, I declared this year my Champagne birthday celebration.  So what does one do when it’s their champagne birthday?  They bake cupcakes!

Champagne Cupcakes

For the cake part, you can use any flavour of cake mix that you would like to (I used French Vanilla) and substitute the water amount with champagne.  As always, read ALL (hmmm, is that a shot at myself?) of the directions before you start…especially for the filling, as there are a number of different steps.

Cupcake:

1 box of white cake mix

1 1/4 cups of champagne

3 eggs

Bake cake as according to the directions on the back of the box . . . or as how your favourite recipe suggests.

Filling:

adapted from Sprinkle Bakes

1/2 cup half and half, divided (original recipe calls for heavy cream, but I only had this, and it turned out fine)

1/2 cup champagne

2 tbsp cornstarch

5 tbsp granulated sugar

1 whole egg

2 egg yolks

2 tbsp unsalted butter

1 tsp vanilla

In a medium bowl, whisk cornstarch in 1/4 cup of cream. Combine the remaining cream, sugar and 1/2 cup champagne in a saucepan; bring to a boil then remove from heat.

Beat the whole egg and egg yolks into the cornstarch/heavy cream mixture.  Pour 1/3 of boiling champagne mixture into the egg mixture, whisking constantly so the eggs do not cook.  Return the remaining champagne/cream mixture to a boil.  Pour in the hot egg mixture in a stream, whisking constantly until the mixture thickens.  Remove from heat and beat in the butter and vanilla.  It will seems like it is never going to thicken, then BAM all of a sudden, you have filling!

Cut a divot into the top of each cupcake and fill with pastry cream.

Trim the cut-out cake pieces flat to make a “lid”  . . .

. . . and place on top of the filled divot.

Frosting:

adapted from Homemade by Holman

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

3-4 cups powdered sugar

3 Tbsp champagne

In a large mixing bowl, beat butter on medium high speed until smooth and fluffy.  Add vanilla extract and about three cups of powdered sugar.  Mix on low speed to ensure you don’t get covered in icing sugar!  Add in champagne and mix on low to incorporate.  Increase speed to medium and beat about one minute to whip frosting.  I needed to add an extra TBSP of champagne to the icing to get the correct consistency.

Frost cooled cupcakes as desired.  I used Wilton white candy pearls, and put each one on it’s place with tweezers! Labour intensive, but worth it for the look. Elegant and tasty.