Brandy-Soaked Christmas Cupcakes

Method

How to make Brandy-Soaked Christmas Cupcakes

Bring the brandy up to the boil on the hob then remove and add the cranberries. Cover with a lid and leave for one hour.

Meanwhile, put the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl – flour, sugar, baking powder, cocoa and butter (treat butter as ‘dry’ for our purposes). Mix until you have an even sandy consistency.

Measure out the milk in a jug, add the egg and vanilla and whisk well. Drizzle into the flour whilst mixing, until you have a smooth batter/mixture.

Add the chocolate chips and drained cranberries and mix in briefly without bashing into pieces, reserving the brandy for later. Spoon evenly into 12 cupcake cases and bake at 170°C for 20 minutes until they bounce back when touched. Cool on a wire rack.

In the meantime make the icing by mixing all the ingredients together for several minutes until light and fluffy. Pour in 10-20ml of your cooking brandy into the icing depending on the consistency – you should aim for something that holds its shape without being too stiff. Pipe the icing on top of the cakes using a reusable piping bag and large star nozzle.

To decorate, roll out a small amount of white fondant and cut with a circular cutter about 5cm in diameter. Place with on top of your icing allowing folds to appear like a table cloth around the sides.

Roll out some dark green fondant, and either cut out three holly leaves if you have a cutter or mould three leaves if you do not. Place these on your fondant with a dab of a damp paintbrush.

Roll three red berries from your red fondant and stick on top with the damp paintbrush to finish. Inactive prep. time: 1 hour.