Boozy Sunday Tea Party

So for my friend's birthday, she decided she wanted a boozy tea party - ooh yeah, I like it already. So I wanted to make it something more than the usual tea party.. a concoction of gin and tonic and sambuca cupcakes, something you can eat EVEN with a hangover, which we did!!

I think these are actually best eaten the day after they have been made as the alcohol has really settled into the cake and you get the full flavour, but still tasty on the day they're made!

Perfect hangover cure

Ingredients for gin and tonic cupcakes:-

115g butter
130g castor sugar
3 eggs
195g all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
40ml Gordons gin

20ml tonic water

Method:-

Preheat the oven to 180C or gas mark 4.
Line a muffin tin with 12 cupcake liners.

Using an electric beater or whisk, beat the butter and sugar for a few minutes until light and fluffy and the sugar and butter lighten in colour. Add the eggs, one at a time beating quite thoroughly after each addition.

In a separate bowl, sieve the flour, baking powder and salt and add half of this to the egg mixture. Beat until combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and pour in half the tonic water. Beat again until combined and repeat the flour and use the gin until finished, alternating between the two.

Immediately, fill the cupcake liners and bake for about 20 mins. Don't forget to rotate the tray about half way through if you have a gas oven, to ensure evenly cooked.

You should have enough mixture to make 24 small-ish cupcakes or 20 decent sized cupcakes.

Remove from oven and leave in tray for a few minutes. Remove and then place cupcakes on a wire rack to cool. Don’t forget to remove from the muffin tray!



For the gin icing:-

250g icing sugar
125g butter
2 tblsp Gordon's gin

green colouring (optional)

fondant icing

lime quarters

Method:-

With your hand mixer or food processor, cream butter and icing sugar until smooth. Add the gin 1tblsp at a time. If mixture still feels too stiff add some more gin. Add a few drops of green food colouring until desired greenness reached.  If you want to pipe the frosting, I usually use the largest star one, this gives a lovely swirl effect. Decorate with wedges of lime and gin bottles made from fondant icing.

Gin 'n' tonic cupcakes with lime

For the sambuca cupcakes:-

Repeat the process as above, but instead of gin use black sambuca and black food colouring. Where black sambuca is not available, use the clear sambuca and just use plenty of black food colouring. Decorate with liquorice allsorts.

Black sambuca cupcakes with liquorice allsorts

These were so lovely, I think next time I'm going to try more alcohol flavours, the possibilities are endless!