Tailgate Central: Bourbon Cupcakes

The college football season kicks off tomorrow, and the next 24 hours can't tick away quickly enough. If you're like a lot of football fans, though, there's more to the season than wins and losses, fumbles and touchdowns, making fun of Lou Holtz, and hoping Corso doesn't put on your mascot's head. Almost as important as the actual games are the tailgates that go with them.

This week's culinary concoction? Bourbon Cupcakes. I know, I know. When you think "tailgate" you probably don't think "baked goods"... but when you think "football" is "Florida Atlantic at Texas" the first thing that comes to mind?

I didn't think so.

If the boys are going to be playing cupcakes, we might as well be eating them, too. And if we're going to be eating cupcakes, they might as well have some liquor in them, no?


Ingredients (The Cupcakes)

• 1/2 cup butter (unsalted, room temp.)
• 2/3 cup sugar (granulated)
• 3 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 tablespoon lemon extract
• 1 1/2 cups flour (all purpose)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup milk

Directions
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and line a muffin tin with 12 paper liners.

Cream the butter and sugar. The recipe I was using instructed that I do it until they were "light and fluffy", so if you know what that means that's a plus. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing them in fully after each. Beat in the vanilla and lemon extract.


Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a separate bowl. Add half of the flour mixture to the other bowl and mix it in thoroughly. Then do the same with the milk. Finish by mixing in what's left of the flour mixture.

Fill the muffin tin evenly (and not too full or they'll overflow and go everywhere) and bake them for 20ish minutes -- until they're a nice shade of golden-brown. Test with a toothpick or fork -- if it comes out of the cupcake cleanly, they're probably done.

When they're done, pull them out to cool. Don't put the frosting on until they're totally cool. While the cupcakes are cooling, you have more than enough time to make the frosting:


Ingredients (Bourbon Frosting)

• 1/4 cup butter (unsalted, room temp)
• 1 tablespoon cream
• 2 cups powdered (confectioner's) sugar
• 2 tablespoons Bourbon
• A pinch of salt.

Directions
Cream the butter, followed by the sugar and salt. Finish with the cream and whiskey. I would start with 1 Tablespoon of Bourbon and taste it. I used 3 total, but somewhere between 2 and 3 tablespoons the alcohol taste came out. I thought this was a good thing, you might not. Anything more than 4 tablespoons and you probably ought to just go ahead and drink from the bottle. It's faster.

I would also add some food coloring at this point, too, since white frosting on yellow cupcakes is boring (see below). I frosted the cupcakes poorly, but that's just part of my style. You might want to spend a little bit more time on that. Or not. Totally up to you.

Next week we'll try something a little more manly. If you have requests or tips for future recipes, feel free to send them to pete.holiday@gmail.com.

Hat tip: Sweet Napa & The Joy of Baking.