Christmas Vanilla Cupcakes with Peppermint Frosting

INGREDIENTS

For the Vanilla Cupcakes:

• 14 tablespoons (200 g) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 ⅓ cups (300g) superfine sugar
• 4 large eggs, room temperature
• 3 ½ cups (400 g) all-purpose flour, sifted
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2 cups (500 mL) heavy cream, room temperature
• 2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste

For the Peppermint Frosting:

• 2 ¼ cups (500 mL) heavy cream, cold
• 1 cup (240 g) mascarpone, cold
• 1 ¾ cups (195 g) confectioners' sugar, sifted*

For Decorating:

• Red marzipan
• Candy Canes

DIRECTIONS

For the Vanilla Cupcakes:

1. Preheat the oven to 400º F (200º C). Line cupcake pans with 24 paper cup liners.
2. Sift the flour, superfine sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl, twice, and set aside.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment.
4. Cream the butter until light and fluffy, about 6 minutes, make sure your butter is at room temp.
5. Add the eggs, flour/sugar mixture, heavy cream and vanilla to the creamed butter mixture, and then beat slowly until well incorporated, but not more than 1½ minutes.
6. Scoop the batter into prepared pans, using a standard size ice cream scoop, filling about ¾ full.

For the Peppermint Frosting:

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment, mix all the ingredients until fluffy, about 3-4 minutes.
2. Be careful not to overbeat mixture. If, by chance, you have overbeaten the mixture, simply add a few teaspoons of cold heavy cream (straight from the refrigerator) and carefully blend. It’s a trick I learned from Martha Stewart, and it makes the cream perfect again!

*If your preference is a less sweet frosting, simply use less confectioners’ sugar.

For Decorating:

1. Place the cream in a piping bag; I use a #849 nozzle from Ateco.
2. Pipe frosting on top of each cupcake. If you find it difficult to pipe on a swirl on a cupcake, check out my YouTube video on how to do a similar swirl.
3. Roll out red marzipan, press your favorite stamp on it, take a round cookie cutter and cut out a circle, place it on top of the frosting, or add crushed candy canes or chocolate pearls on the frosting.