New Year's Mimosa Cupcakes

For Christmas I got the Betty Crocker "The Big Book of Cupcakes" - I have already gone through the book and bookmarked all the recipes I HAVE to try out this year. I made a promise to myself that by the time 2015 ends that I would try all of the recipes I marked off in the book. I figure, what's a better way to start my new year baking adventures than with the New Year's Mimosa Cucpakes?! This cupcake embodies everything that is good about ringing in the new year... cupcakes and a little bit of booze!

Makes - 
28 regular-sized cupcakes or 60 mini-sized cupcakes 

Cupcake:
- 2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour 
- 3 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- ¾ cup melted unsalted butter 
- 1 2/3 cups sugar
- 5 egg whites
- 2 ½ tsp vanilla 
- ¾ cup champagne
- ½ cup orange juice
- 1 tsp orange zest 

1. Heat oven to 350^o degree and line cupcake pan with liners. 
2. Mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.
3. In a separate big bowl mix together the butter with the sugar, egg whites, and vanilla.
4. Next, alternately add the flour mixture along with the champagne and orange juice into the big bowl of butter, sugar, egg whites, and vanilla.
5. Using an ice cream scooper, scoop the batter into the cupcake liners to 2/3 full. 
6. Bake 16 minutes for mini-cupcakes or 18-20 minutes for regular-sized cupcakes. 

Frosting:

- 5 cups of powdered sugar

- ½ cup of unsalted butter

- 1 tsp orange zest 

- 3 tbsp champagne

- 2 tbsp orange juice

1. Beat the butter until creamy.
2. Add in the orange zest, champagne, and orange juice and mix it all together.
3. Slowly add in the powdered sugar, feel free to stop when you feel as if the frosting is sweet enough to your liking. The original recipe called for 6 cups of powdered sugar... but it is a new year and some of us are trying to keep our resolutions and not get diabetes.

A page-view of the "The Big Book of Cupcakes". You can see all my bunny page-markers in the back, there are way more of them than the pictures show so look out for all of those exciting cupcake posts!

  

Sooo much mini-cucakes! Just the sight of them makes me happy :)

Here's the final product! My frosting was a little runny even after being in the freezer... the champagne did me in (there was too much of it!).