Orange Cupcakes

By Texaschef11

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup butter
• 3 eggs
• 2 1/2 cup All-Purpose flour
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 3/4 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 1/2 cup milk
• 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup triple sec
• Zest from 2 oranges

Preparation

Step 1

Allow butter and eggs to stand at room temperature for 30 minutesWhile that’s happening, use a microplane or grater to zest two oranges. In a bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl, combine milk and vinegar, whisking briefly. Set aside to curdle. (Basically, you’re making buttermilk, which makes for tastier, more tender cupcakes, in my opinion). In yet another bowl, soak the orange zest in the triple sec.

Preheat over to 375 F.

In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar.

Add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla, and then the triple-sec-orange-zest mixture.

Alternately add flour mixture and milk, beating after each addition just until combined. Do not overmix! Fill lined cupcake pan 3/4 full each. Or, if you’re like us, spray down the cupcake tins because you don’t have enough tin liners.

Since these are mini cupcakes, the baking time is tricky. I recommend baking for 12 minutes, checking how cooked they are with a toothpick, and adding more time based on how clean the toothpick is. For us, we ended up baking for 15 minutes, but I think the alcohol content contributed to that cooking time.

For the Cream Cheese Frosting, you’ll need two bowls. In each one, put 4 ounces of softened cream cheese with 2 tablespoons of softened butter. Cream together. Add powdered sugar in half-cup increments until the frosting is so stiff it’s hard to mix, but all the powdered sugar is combined with the cream cheese/butter mixture.

At this point, add a couple tablespoons of rum to one bowl, and a couple tablespoons of triple sec to the other, and mix together. Add more liquor or powdered sugar to get your preferred texture and flavor, and food dye if you care to. We added a little red and yellow to the jelly bean cupcakes to keep the coloring silly, and a little brown to the rum to hint at the color of dark rum.

I don’t recall the frosting tip we used, but we really liked how it turned out. I specifically used only fruit-flavored jelly bellies for the Triple Sec Cream Cheese Frosting Cupcakes, but go wild–maybe root beer and caramel popcorn is really what these need.