Margarita Cupcakes

A few weeks ago we had some customers at the restaurant who were celebrating a 21st birthday, so they brought in margarita cupcakes with real tequila in the icing. Now, I had never heard of such a thing, but as a tequila-lover, naturally I was intrigued. Lucky for us, these customers decided to share a few with us lowly servers, and I kid you not, they were the best cupcakes I have ever eaten in my entire life. It was to the point where even though each baby cake was probably loaded with 3 lbs of butter and was going to destroy my entire gastrointestinal tract, I wouldn’t have thought twice about eating a dozen more of them. They were that good. We asked for the recipe and got mixed signals that eventually ended in “just Google it!”
I decided to try making them myself as a going away present for my manager, so Google it I did, and I found about 46 different recipes. Cool. I ended up going with this one, but needless to say, it didn’t meet my unrealistically high expectations set by mystery baking-genius customers. They were still pretty satisfying though, and my nephews got to help me make them, so I’d call that a win.

Here’s what you need for the cake (I made two batches, one with lactose and one without):
1 1/2 C all-purpose flour
1 1/2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1/2 C (1 stick) unsalted butter (Or Earth Balance non-dairy butter)
1 C sugar
2 large eggs
2 limes, zested and juiced
1/4 t vanilla extract
1/2 C buttermilk (Or Lactaid milk)


Preheat the oven to 325 and get your paper cupcake holders ready to rock. Mix together flour, baking powder and salt in one bowl while you mix together the butter and sugar in a different bowl (if you’re fancy, you should use a standing mixer. I’m not fancy.) Then add the eggs one at a time to the wet ingredients, then the lime zest, juice and vanilla. Next alternate between adding the dry ingredients and the buttermilk, Pour mixture into the paper holders and stick in the oven for about 20 minutes.

They should look like this. Now it’s time for the icing.

You need:
1 C (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature (Or Earth Balance)
2 3/4 – 3 cups confectioners’ sugar (Or if you run out, like I did, Splenda mix and normal sugar. Ghetto.)
1 1/2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice 
1-2 tablespoons tequila
pinch salt

These bad boys only missed Cinco De Mayo by a month! Woops. 


Happy Tuesday!