This year's Christmas cupcakes

I can’t believe it’s come round so soon, but this is me signing off for Christmas!  I still have so many festive things I wanted to blog about (like lovely Christmas adverts, amazing gingerbread houses, a beautiful paper garland that came in the post and the best ever way to dress up a gift card) but alas, time has run away from me.  Our presents are all bought, made, wrapped and waiting by the door to be packed into the car tomorrow as we head off to my sister-in-law’s for Christmas.  I’ve also been doing some festive baking to take up with me, some of which Mr M kindly photographed for me as my camera is still at the camera hospital!  There’s the usual plethora of mince pies, some of Nigella’s Christmas cupcakes (above) and a new addition to my festive repertoire, brandy butter cupcakes.

Brandy buttercream icing (from The Primrose Bakery Cupcake Cookbook)

1.  Put 115g unsalted butter, 60ml semi-skimmed milk, 2 big tbsp brandy butter, 1 tsp vanilla extract and 250g icing sugar (all at room temperature)  in a large mixing bowl and beat with an electric hand mixer until smooth.

2.  Gradually add another 250g icing sugar, beating well until creamy and smooth.

3.  Taste the buttercream to check if there is enough brandy butter for your liking.  If not, add more, but go carefully as it’s quite rich!

4.  Use to ice chocolate cupcakes, or vanilla cupcakes, or (as I have) vanilla cupcakes made with half unsalted butter and half brandy butter to crank up the festive quality!

I hope you have a wonderfully joyful and merry Christmas.  Thanks for sticking with me this last year!

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