I’m back from Puerto Rico, a few shades tanner, plenty rested, and ready to celebrate the holidays. Granted the 50 degree temperature drop was a little harsh last night when we landed, it’s great to be home with my family, although I wouldn’t mind a little snow. These cupcakes are really festive and delicious — I made some minis for a dental school holiday party and these full size cupcakes for Ryan to take to his company’s party. Decorated with some red chocolate candies and some green frosting, they look, taste, and smell like wintertime.
I doctored up my favorite chocolate cupcake recipe with peppermint extract and topped the cupcakes with a light and fluffy whipped cream peppermint frosting. Recently I like adding whipped cream to frostings because sometimes the frosting can be just nauseatingly sweet and thick. I can’t taste the mocha flavor much, but Ryan hates coffee and definitely picked up on it, so I’ve called them peppermint mocha to warn you that there’s coffee in there. Plus the word mocha makes anything sound fancier.
Peppermint Mocha Cupcakes
For the cupcakes:
1-3/4 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
3/4 cups cocoa powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp kosher salt
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 tsp peppermint extract
1 cup freshly brewed hot coffee
– Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line 24 regular cupcake tins with paper liners
– Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl and whisk together
– In another bowl, combine the buttermilk, oil, eggs, and vanilla. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry
– With the mixer still on low, add the coffee and stir just to combine
– Divide the batter and fill the liners 2/3 full
– Bake 15-20 minutes, or until cake tester comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes on wire wrack and turn out to cool completely.
For the peppermint whipped cream frosting:
1/2 cup butter, softened
4-1/2 cups confectioners sugar
1 tsp peppermint extract
3/4 cup whipping cream
– Cool bowl and beater in freezer for a few minutes. Beat whipping cream until stiff peaks form, set aside.
– In the bowl of an electric mixer beat butter until light and fluffy.
– Slowly add confectioners sugar with mixer on low speed. Add peppermint extract. Increase speed to medium and beat until frosting is smooth and uniform.
– Gently fold in the whipped cream with a spatula until well incorporated.
– Transfer frosting to a piping bag fit with a large star tip and decorate cupcakes as desired.
You may need more frosting, so keep some extra ingredients on hand in case you run out. It’s hard for me to say because I made minis too, so needed to whip up more frosting because I had made more cupcakes. Let me know if you try the recipe out what kind of numbers you got/needed!
Mmmmm, these cupcakes look delicious! Love the idea of peppermint plus mocha flavor – yum!
I love your little holly berries on the cupcakes. Cute idea.
Erica, love love love your blog and all the little details you go into. Please tell me one thing. What type of camera do you use to take your pictures with? Happy New Yea!
Used the cake part of these cupcakes for my own cupcake experiment today, and they turned out great! I skipped the peppermint extract because it’s not really my thing, and used a red-eye instead of just a cup of coffee (with a shot of espresso) for extra coffee flavor. They were amazing, one of the best cupcakes I ever had, perfectly moist. I finished them off by carving a hole in the top, filling it with chocolate mousse, and icing it with a combination of melted bittersweet chocolate and butter. Turned out great =) It would be fun to try filling them next time with your peppermint whipped cream frosting in place of the mousse, for a seasonal twist.
Thanks for the recipe!
Can’t wait to make them but what is the red and green made of? Berry?
Erica — December 11th, 2012 @ 7:55 pm
The red are little chocolate candies I found and I piped the green leaves on with extra frosting dyed green