Christmas is finally this week so naturally it’s time for the last Christmas-y recipe of the year. Eggnog cupcakes would be the obvious seasonally-appropriate “cocktail cupcake” so I was originally all set to make a batch of those as my last Christmas baking endeavor of the year and even had the ingredients stockpiled away. However, last week one of my Japanese coworkers brought some cupcakes she made to work and while they didn’t taste like anything terribly special, the attention to detail she put into to decorating them adorably was impressive. I’m usually the sort to put taste above looks when I bake (mostly because I am too impatient to start eating!), but upon seeing those cute little cupcakes I realized I needed to start putting a little more effort into how my baked goods looked lest I lose to people like my coworker (yes, this is cupcake war). As such, I decided that instead of making normal eggnog cupcakes, I would challenge myself to make these snowman-shaped eggnog cake pops and then call them “drunken snowmen” due to the rum content in the eggnog recipe I use (if that doesn’t kill any germs in the raw egg then I don’t know what will!).
Gingerbread Cookies with Limoncello Icing
Sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies are traditional staples for the holiday season, and when I was a child we had the tradition of making frosted sugar cookies every year for Christmas. Every year I looked forward to cutting out cookies with our stash of festive cookie cutters and decorating them with different icing colors to my little heart’s content, but looking back, making and decorating them was always much more fun than eating them. Frosted sugar cookies are definitely super cute, but they’re also super sweet so it’s easy to get tired of them after a few bites. However, it wouldn’t feel like Christmas without cookies, so for the last couple of years I’ve been making these gingerbread cookies instead, which are a bit less sweet and packed with spicy ginger, cinnamon, and cloves flavor. Plus, I started adding limocello to the icing, so they really are the perfect adult Christmas cookie. If you’re bored of traditional Christmas cookies definitely give these a shot★[Continue Reading/続きを読む]
Mulled Wine Cake Bites (with bonus absinthe cake bites!)
As those of you who have been following me on Instagram know, in the spring and summer I make a fair amount of varieties of sangria and even made some sangria cupcakes, which were surprisingly quite tasty. And since sangria is to summer as mulled wine is to winter, when I was making my last batch of mulled wine I got to wondering if it would be good in cupcakes as well. My friend had a birthday in late November and I figured that would be a good opportunity to put this idea to the test, but since someone else was already bringing a proper cake to the party I decided that cake bites (cake pops without the stick) would make for a better gift since they are easier to take home and keep. The final result was the perfect mix of spicy and sweet and fruity, plus I had enough cake and frosting ingredients left to make a batch of absinthe cake bites (with this recipe) so you’re getting two recipes for the price of one today.
Pumpkin Spice Rum Cupcakes
Tokyo has been sliding into Christmas mode since Halloween ended, but I personally can’t bring myself to get into the winter-y Christmas spirit until December. That said, come next week it will be December and I know I will start wanting to leave my beloved pumpkins and kabocha squashes aside for Christmas cookies and mulled wine, so as a fitting last autumn-themed baked goods recipe I figured I would post these pumpkin spice rum cupcakes I made back in October. [Continue Reading/続きを読む]
Maple Whiskey Bacon Pecan Pie
For Americans, November is all about Thanksgiving and even though I haven’t really celebrated the holiday properly since moving to Japan, I still start wanting to make traditional Thanksgiving desserts like pumpkin pie or pecan pie come November. Pumpkin pie is clearly the most popular of the Thanksgiving dessert fare, but personally I have always been more partial to pecan pie. Depending on the recipe, pecan pies can be borderline too sweet, but there are also plenty of variations out there, so to cut down on the cloying sweetness potential this time I went with adding some salty bacon to the top to balance the sweetness of the sugar and syrup and some whiskey to the filling to bring out all the flavors. [Continue Reading/続きを読む]