This week, I am sharing the recipe for my SCRUMPTIOUS cranberry orange cupcakes from the Rave in the New Year party. I highly recommend baking with fresh, SEASONAL ingredients. Cranberries are harvested in September/October and available fresh through December. While oranges are available year round, many varieties are best in the winter. These moist cupcakes are infused with orange zest, triple sec and fresh cranberries. The cupcake perfectly combines the TARTNESS of cranberries with the tangy SWEETNESS of oranges. I topped each cupcake with Toba Garrett’s buttercream frosting, which I spiked with Triple Sec.
Cranberry Orange Cupcakes
Adapted from Recipe by Taste and Tell Blog
Yield: 12 regular cupcakes plus 75 mini-cupcakes
Ingredients
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 4 eggs
- zest of 2 orange
- 1½ cup buttermilk
- 1 tablespoon Triple Sec
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 cups fresh cranberries, roughly chopped
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350ºF
- Line muffin tins with cupcake liners
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt
- In the bowl of a Kitchen Aid mixer, beat the sugar and butter together until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes
- Add in the eggs, one at a time, scraping down the bowl between additions. Beat in the orange zest, Triple Sec and the vanilla extract
- Add ⅓ of the flour mixture to the butter and beat until combined
- Follow that with ½ of the buttermilk
- Alternate dry and wet ingredients and then fold cranberries into the batter
- Use a regular or mini ice cream scoop to fill each cupcake and bake until a tester inserted in the middle comes out clean, about 18 minutes for regular and 12 for mini
- Allow cupcakes to cool completely on a wire rack
- Spike Toba Garrett’s buttercream with a 3 tablespoons of Triple Sec
- Color frosting pink, blue and yellow and use Wilton’s Tri-Color Couple and 1M tip to pipe neon frosting perfect for a rave!
“Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.”––Sam Levenson
Recipes From This Post:
Vanilla Buttercream Frosting: Toba Garrett plus 3 tablespoons of Triple Sec
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Stand Mixer: Kitchen Aid Tilt Head; Kitchen Aid Bowl Lift (we prefer the bowl lift model, but it’s more expensive)
Bakeware Set: Calphalon 10-Piece; Calphalon 5-Piece
I love the colors of these cupcakes and the presentation is so adorable! Absolutely fantastic.
Oooh, that is sooo cute! I love how they turned out.
Will try this soon with my trusty, mini oven. I hope my icing comes out right cause I haven’t done that ever.
What a cute idea to make a clock out of the cupcakes! We are thinking of hosting a New Year’s Eve get-together and this would be perfect. Especially with the fresh, seasonal flavors.
First of all what lovely presentation! I am a big fan of cranberries and I am guessing Orange cranberry combination would be successful. Quick question – is there an eggless version of this cake? Many of my friends and family are vegetarian and then I can bake for them too.
Wow, these look so yummy and the decoration looks pretty. I will try these with my little brother and family. Thank you for sharing!
Those cupcakes look delicious and love the idea as well. It looks pleasing to the eye too. Thanks for sharing the recipe and will definitely give this a try sometime soon.