Rocky Road 'Christmas Pudding' Cupcakes

Hullo, my Pixels!
I've been very naughty again and haven't posted in about two weeks or so. Finishing college before the Christmas holidays just took up too much of my time and I had a bit of a brain burnout. Luckily, I received an email from a wine company, Yapp, about their Christmas time recipe competition - here. I haven't been paid to create this post or anything like that, the prize just seemed like an amazing thing this time of year. Personally, I don't drink wine, but my parents are big fans, so in the spirit of giving around Christmas time, £150 worth of wine for them to spend seemed appropriate.
The recipe for these just looked too good not to try out. I'm honestly not a fan of the traditional Christmas pudding, so any alternative possible is good in my eyes (I'm more of a yule log kinda girl myself). I'm not a wine expert, but I feel like Bellet Domaine de la Source Rouge would be the perfect accompaniment to this recipe because of the fruity, berry flavours matching with the cherries found inside the cupcakes.
INGREDIENTS

• 120g plain white flour
• 25g cocoa powder
• 1 1/2tsp baking powder
• Salt
• 70g unrefined light muscovado sugar
• 60g glacé cherries, finely chopped
• 25g mini marshmallows
• 50g milk chocolate chips
• 1 egg
• 100ml milk
• 3tbsp sunflower oil (vegetable oil in my case)

Topping:

• 150g white chocolate chips
• Any decorations

METHOD

1. Collect all of the necessary ingredients and preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4.

2. In a large bowl, sieve together the cocoa powder, plain flour, baking powder and salt.

3. Chop the cherries into smaller pieces, ready to stir into the flour and cocoa powder mixture. Also add the marshmallows and milk chocolate chips.

4. In a jug, whisk together the egg, oil and milk.

5. Slowly pour the wet mixture into the bowl of dry ingredients and gently mixed until just combined. Don't over mix it at all.

6. Line a baking tray with super festive and cute cupcake cases!

7. Spoon the mixture carefully into the cupcake cases and make sure the mixture is distributed evenly.

8. Bake in the oven for about 20 - 25 minutes until a cocktail stick comes out clean. Marshmallow may be on the stick, but that's fine.

9. Let the cupcakes cool down considerably before applying the topping.

10. Melt the white chocolate and drizzle it over the top of the cupcakes. Top each cupcake with decorations of your choice. I went for silver balls and Christmas-appropriate snowflake and snowmen sprinkles which were sooo cute.

11. Ta-daaaaah! The cupcakes are done. Now, I will say the icing didn't turn out as I expected. I don't think anything ever does, decoration-wise with me. They're still pretty tasty though.

I'm not exactly sure why these cakes didn't rise an awful lot; although they didn't start with a lot of mixture in each case to begin with. I was really annoyed the white chocolate topping kind of failed, but it ended up working like a drizzle cake by seeping into the cupcakes and giving you hints of white chocolate every now and again. The Christmasy decorations and adorable cake cases were what saved it, I think. The first one I tried wasn't anything amazing, but after letting them rest for a few hours, the next one tasted a lot better.

I'd love to see any Christmas bakes from you, or know what your favorite foods are to eat during the Christmas season. Apart from that, enjoy Christmas Eve and have a merry Christmas!

Sommer
♥