New Year's Eve Champagne Cupcakes with Kir Royale Frosting

A holiday rolls around, and I decide to bake. It's becoming my own little tradition. At almost the last minute, Aaron and I ended up hosting at NYE party at our place. After asking everyone to bring a drink or a snack if they could, I hunted through my ridiculous number of starred dessert recipes (160 and counting!) and when I found these, I said perfect and got rolling.

And then I realized, while baking, I had run out of powdered sugar during the baking extravaganza and hadn't replaced it and we were short on eggs. Lucky for me, I have a corner store and it saved my cupcakes! I didn't have any creme de cassis, the traditional liquor of a kir royale, but I did have some black raspberry liquor, which I decided was close enough. Though my frosting wasn't purple at all (I should have added more), it was very delicious.

New Year's Eve Champagne Cupcakes with Kir Royale Frosting slightly modified from 52 Cupcakes:

Makes 15 large and 12 mini cupcakes

For the cupcakes-
2¾ c. all-purpose flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2/3 c. butter
1½ c. sugar
¾ c. champagne (go for sweet versus dry)
6 egg whites

For the frosting-
¾ c. vegetable shortening
1½ sticks of unsalted butter, room temperature
4 Tb. champagne
1 Tb. black raspberry liquor
16 oz. powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a cupcake pan with liners.

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until very light and fluffy. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together, and then blend into creamed mixture alternately with champagne.

In another large clean bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold 1/3 of the whites into batter to lighten it then fold in remaining egg whites. Fill the cupcake liners about 2/3 full.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.

While they cool, make the frosting. In a large bowl beat the shortening and butter until combined. Add the champagne and black raspberry liquor. Slowly add the powdered sugar and beat until smooth. If necessary, add additional champagne to achieve desired consistency. I ended up adding more and may have come close to ruining the frosting, but it was so cool to watch the fizzy bubbles mix in. The key to great frosting is really letting everything mix in together and then beating it a little longer. The champagne helped too.

I added the gelt on top because I bought too much for Chanukah and I thought they looked festive. These are really tasty! The cake is like a slightly sweet cornbread, which sounds a little weird, but really works. It’s a sweet, but not too sweet dessert and a great way to celebrate. Like, for the birthday of someone special (happy birthday Renai!).

I hope you all are having a great start to 2011!