Yum

These tequila sunrise cupcakes seemed to be crying out for a fancy decoration, and so I was forced to logon the youtube for a flower tutorial. For years I resisted watching youtube videos. I am not sure why this is. Perhaps I am a nonconformist. Perhaps I’m just stubborn and difficult. However, I have recently learned that you can learn how to pipe buttercream flowers and many other skills on youtube. I now find myself falling into a black hole of auto-play and suddenly waking up four hours later wondering why its dark outside, why my amazon account shows that I have ordered four new piping tips, and how long it will take for my emergency butter stash to warm up to room temperature.

I’m definitely not perfect at it this piping yet, but it is certainly very fun. Also, nature itself is imperfect, so I don’t feel like my flowers have to be too uniform.

This cupcake is the second in my Boozy Bakes series, and it is one of my favorite college cocktails: the good old tequila sunrise. The sunrise element comes from two colorful ingredients: orange juice and grenadine (or that sugary cherry juice that is in the bottom of your maraschino cherry jar, either one works.). The tequila element comes from… tequila. Go figure.

If you are here from pinterest for the recipe, keep scrolling to the bottom.

What do you think of my new platform?!

This weekend I impulsively decided to move my website to another platform so that I could host it myself. I made this decision and then immediately dived into the process with absolutely zero research, planning, or knowledge. HOWEVER, my Man-husband and a very nice gentleman on the Bluehost tech support chat came through and got it all set up. What do you think of my new digs? Cute amiright?? I will say, the chat was very helpful, but I knew I was in trouble when the gentleman on the other line kept asking me fairly reasonable and straightforward questions like “What is the name of the file of your database back-up?” and I had engaging and pithy responses like, “What is a database?” Our two-hour content-rescuing chat session was really a bonding session for us. We became very close.

NOTE FOR MY READERS!! I think (?) that I lost all my subscribers with this move, so please resubscribe!

Tequila Sunrise Cupcakes: The elements.

For this recipe, I wanted to have that cherry flavor really come through. Orange flavor is easy to pick out and highlight but cherry is interesting too, and I wanted to explore it. Everybody loves grenadine, even kids. I remember going out to eat with my parents as a little kid, and they would get me a “kiddie cocktail,” which I’m pretty sure was just sprite and grenadine. The best part was fishing the cherry out of the glass…. it tasted just like candy to me.

I feel like the tequila sunrise is the college-kid equivalent of the kiddie cocktail. It’s a cocktail, but it tastes like…you know. Orange juice and cherries. Delicious, but not for those that enjoy the actual taste of alcohol.

The base sponge of the tequila sunrise cupcakes themselves is your basic white cupcake with some fun additions. I added grenadine, orange zest, tequila, and chopped up chunks of sweet cherries. The batter is pretty thick. Or thicc, as my students would say. It has to have some structure to prevent the cherries from sinking straight to the bottom.

Should I just… pour on the booze? Yes.

After they came out of the oven, I stared at them for a few minutes wondering how to infuse tequila flavor in them, and landed on a plan that is probably a little crazy and would bar me from every patisserie in France. I basically just brushed straight tequila all over the warm cupcakes and hoped it wouldn’t turn into mush.

Listen. It totally worked. Don’t be shy with that tequila, go to town with your pastry brush and get it in there. My friend Jake recommended poking holes in the cake before brushing, and I think if you really like the taste of tequila, that is an excellent idea and you should go for it.

I chose to do a two tone buttercream frosting to really make it look like a sunrise cupcake, and piped some buttercream flowers (roses? carnations?) on top of my little cakes, but you can totally skip that if you don’t want to get the dishes dirty.

I hope you all enjoyed the beautiful weather this week. Teachers, stay strong. Only a month until spring break.