Wine Cupcakes Part 1 - White Wine Cupcakes with Wine Buttercream Frosting

My friend brought up the idea of wine cupcakes for her birthday party. She is thinking of doing a Springtime in Paris, wine and cheese party. I said I would help in any way I could, and we got to talking about doing a wine cupcake. I have a bunch of recipes I found for cocktail cupcakes, but none with wine. I found some and decided to a test run of the cupcakes this weekend for her to test out before the party. The first one I made was a white wine cupcake, with a wine buttercream frosting. I used a moscato, because thats what I had waiting in my fridge, but I think any sweet white wine or even a sparkling champagne would work well. These cupcakes came out super light and fluffy, almost like an angel food cake. The frosting also came out light and fluffy, with just a hint of wine. This is definitely a recipe I would make again.

Cupcake Ingredients:

* 2/3 Cup Unsalted Butter
* 1 1/2 Cup Sugar
* 2 3/4 Cup All-Purpose Flour
* 3 Teaspoon Baking Powder
* 1 Teaspoon Salt
* 3/4 Cup White Wine
* 6 Egg Whites

* Preheat Oven to 350 Degrees Fahrenheit and line 2 muffin pans with paper liners.

* In a bowl, sift together the Flour, Baking Powder and Salt. Set aside.

* In the bowl of your mixer, beat together the Butter and Sugar until light and fluffy.

* Add the Flour Mixture to the Butter Mixture, alternating with the Wine.

* In a separate bowl, beat the Egg Whites using the whisk attachment, until stiff peaks form.

* Fold the Egg Whites into the batter.

***The Egg Whites will make the batter kind of watery, just keep carefully folding the batter with a rubber spatula. Be careful not to over mix the batter.***

* Fill prepared muffin pans with batter.

***The amount of batter only filled about 22 of the muffin cups, you can fill the cups a with a little less batter  for smaller cupcakes if you want the full 24.***

* Bake for 20 minutes and let cool before frosting.

Frosting Ingredients:

* 5 Cups Powdered Sugar
* 2 Cups Unsalted Butter
* 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
* 5 Tablespoons White Wine

* In the bowl of your mixer, beat the butter.

* Add Powdered Sugar one Cup at a time.

* Beating well after each addition.

* Add Vanilla and Wine and beat for another minute on Medium until frosting is combined and light and fluffy.

* Since this was just a test run with the cupcakes, I did not do any fancy frosting or decorating, just used a spoon. They still came out yummy!

* Enjoy!