Champagne cupcakes with champagne icing

I got the inspiration from this recipe


These were also made for my mother-in-laws birthday along with the carrot cupcakes in my first blog. I used the same brown paper cupcake cases and I bought some edible (rice paper) butterflys to decorate.


Second piece of must have equipment is some "cups". You know, the american measuring cups which make measuring   ingredients easier?! Well, get some :-) 


Before I made these I was a bit sceptical that they were going to taste of anything and I'm not a huge champagne fan but someone showed me the recipe a few months ago and I happened to have 3 bottles of champagne laying round the house (like you do) and thought it would be a nice thing to make for a special occasion. Well, they are pretty amazing if I do say so myself. The sponge was so soft and the icing was unbelievably bad for you but it is a pretty perfect cake. 

INGREDIENTS
(it says it makes 20 but with my perfect measure of one ice cream scoop per cake it made 24)


2 3/4 cups self raising flour
3 tsp. baking soda (says babking powder on the original but I used soda to make it lighter
2/3 cup butter
1 1/2 cups caster sugar
3/4 cup champagne (I used Veuve Edouard as it was just one of the ones I had in the house)
6 egg whites


ICING:
5 cups icing sugar
2 cups butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 tablespoons champagne
(I also added pink food colouring but this is totally optional)


METHOD:


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).  Prepare a cupcake pan with liners. 

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until very light and fluffy.

Sift flour and baking powder into the sugar and butter mix.

Add the champagne

In another large clean bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. 

Fold 1/3 of the whites into cake mix to lighten it, then fold in remaining egg whites.  

Divide the mix evenly between the cupcake cases using the amazing gadget-ice cream scoop ;-)

Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.

For the icing:

With an electric mixer, beat together sugar and butter until soft. (beware this blows the sugar everywhere. I covered the bowel as best I could with a tea towel to avoid having a white kitchen).  

Add vanilla and champagne (and food colouring), beating on medium until blended.

Then pipe the icing on as desired.

The butterflys had to be added at the last moment before serving for the would have gone soft (this was a recommendation from the retailer)

Well they looked and tasted pretty amazing. You could defiantly taste the champagne and they left a soft, mellow champagne taste in your mouth for a while afterwards. I can actually taste it as I'm writing..mmm :-D Obviously these are NOT recommended for kids birthday parties ;-)