Eggnog Cupcakes

I'm comin' through for the holidays...with some eggnog cupcakes!

(I like this picture. It was taken approximately 2 seconds before this cupcake fell sideways and spread the pretty eggnog frosting all over a few Christmas tree branches. Oops.)

Our holiday party was last weekend and I decided some festive cupcakes were in order. Usually I'd alter an existing recipe or try to create a new one, but since I hadn't had time to practice recipes earlier, I figured I'd go with something tried-and-true: Eggnog Cupcakes!

I first heard about eggnog cupcakes when I was searching for a cupcake to make for last year's holiday party. I love eggnog, but I wasn't sure how it would translate into cupcakes. In the end, they lost the 2009 holiday cupcake battle to the Peppermint Patty Cupcakes. This year, as I was searching through my extensive list of bookmarked cupcakes, I found a reference to the eggnog cupcakes again. Since they took a backseat at the last holiday party, I figured they deserved to stand out this time around.

Eggnog Cupcakes

recipe slightly adapted from Annie's Eats
yields 12 cupcakes

• 1/4 cup Nassau Royale Liqueur (but you can use any dark rum or bourbon you like)
• 1 cup eggnog
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 - 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

1) Preheat oven to 30 degrees F.

2) Combine rum, eggnog, vegetable oil, apple cider vinegar, and vanilla extract in a small bowl.

3) In a large bowl, combine the nutmeg, sugar, flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

4) Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients. Whisk together until the ingredients are just combined. Don't overbeat the batter.

5) Ladle the batter into 12 cupcake liners.

6) Bake for 18-20 minutes. (If you care, my cupcakes baked in 18 minutes.) Cool before frosting.

Eggnog Frosting
recipe slightly adapted from Annie's Eats
makes enough frosting to pipe onto 12 cupcakes*

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 6 tbsp eggnog
• 2 tbsp Nassau Royale Liqueur (but you can use any dark rum or bourbon you like)
• 2 generous pinches of nutmeg
• 3 - 3-1/2 cups confectioner's sugar

1) Using a mixer, cream the butter for a few minutes.

2) Add eggnog, rum and nutmeg. Allow the ingredients to combine.

3) Add the confectioner's sugar slowly and in increments. This will make the frosting light and fluffy.

4) Frost the eggnog cupcakes.

* If you happen to head over to the Annie's Eats website, you'll notice that I doubled the frosting so that I would have enough to pipe onto 12 cupcakes. If you're planning on only spreading the frosting onto these cupcakes, then you may not need to double the recipe.

I'm so glad I decided to make these. The cupcakes were moist because the recipe uses vegetable oil instead of butter and you can really taste the eggnog in both the cupcake and the frosting. You can also taste the booze. Very delicious holiday combination in my book!

However, I think my favorite thing about these eggnog cupcakes is that the batter can be thrown together by just whisking everything in one bowl. OK, two, if you count the separate bowls for the wet and dry ingredients. On a sad note, I was a little disappointed that I wasn't able to properly capture my new gingerbread cupcake liners in a picture, but there's always next year!