Chocolate Merlot Cupcakes

Today is my best friend's birthday. We celebrated last night with a sushi dinner and some drinks with friends. I love cupcakes and so does she, so her present was easy to figure out. I decided to finally try and make a cupcake bouquet.

Now, it's pretty simple to make one, but it did take some trial and error playing around with it. I moved my cupcakes around several times. I also added some nips into this bouquet, because...well, why not? Mini cupcakes worked well for this, but you could mix and match some regular and mini for a wider variety. I was also going to make two different colored frostings, but after the first batch, Lana decided I had had enough stress-free baking time and that it was time for her to keep trying to swipe everything off the counters.

To make the bouquet, you need a flower pot, a foam ball, some tissue paper, toothpicks and cupcakes. For my flower pot, I actually used a really cute 2-cup measuring cup I found at Michael's.

This was my first start at playing around with the cupcake placement. I just stuck the foam ball in the cup and pressed it in pretty firmly and stabbed it a whole bunch with toothpicks.

Then I actually took them all out and started with the nips. I glued the nips to thicker popsicle-like sticks using a hot glue gun. Some fell off pretty easily, so if you do this, use a sturdy stick and a decent amount of hot glue. I also added in some crinkled squares of tissue paper under each cupcake.

Finally, I took each cupcake off again to frost it. This frosting had a weird consistency. At first it was too thick to pipe, so I added a tiny bit more Merlot to the mix and thinned it out. When you use wine in frosting, it tends to give the frosting a more grainy (and I know this sounds gross, but a slightly almost curdled looking) texture. Putting them back on the toothpicks was trickier because I didn't want to ruin the frosting, but it worked out well.

Here's the recipe I used. The frosting is my own recipe.

Chocolate Merlot Cupcakes with Red Velvet Merlot Buttercream
adapted from Tastes Like Food

3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1.5 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup Merlot
2.5 cups flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
6 ounces dark chocolate, melted

Frosting:
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
5 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup Merlot (you won't use all of it)
1/2 tbsp. red velvet baking emulsion


1. Preheat oven to 350. Line 2 cupcake tins or 1 cupcake tin and 1 mini cupcake tin. Or even 2 mini tins.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar. Add in the eggs, one at a time, mixing each until combined. Add the wine and mix in.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg.
4. Add the flour mix to the wet mix slowly and mix until combined.
5. Melt the chocolate and add the mix, making sure everything is combined.
6. Bake 13-15 minutes for mini cupcakes, 18-22 minutes for regular cupcakes.
7. For the frosting, in the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter until smooth. Add 3 cups of sugar, one at a time, mixing between each addition. Scrape down sides of the bowl as needed.
8. Add 1/4 cup of Merlot and the red velvet emulsion and mix. Add remaining sugar one cup at a time.
9. If it's too thick, add more Merlot, a tablespoon at a time.
10. Frost cupcakes and eat! Or make a bouquet!

I made one batch of mini and one batch of regular. I obviously ate one just to be sure they tasted ok...