Mmmm.  Here’s the cupcake for you to share with Santa by the fireplace:  mulled wine cupcakes.

Not familiar with “mulled wine?”  It’s wine, simmered with ingredients like cinnamon, allspice and cloves until the air smells as warm and inviting as the holidays.  Don’t be timid about experimenting with your wines or your spices.  Then trust your nose.  (Although sampling might be half the fun of being the chef for this one!)

Living in Upstate New York this time of year, we’re blessed with an abundance of fruits, like raspberries and blueberries. 

Inspired, I paraded through the Internet to locate recipes that have me headed straight for fresh picking tomorrow morning early so that I can head to the kitchen.

How about Raspberry Cupcakes with Champagne Buttercream Frosting?  Wow!  But with only 4T of champagne in the frosting recipe…I better pass along my personal note that you can toss a few fresh raspberries into a flute of champagne et voila!  It’s time to have over your girlfriends in spades.

For the blueberries…did you know that freezing fresh blueberries for a few hours will stop them from sinking in the cupcake batter while baking?  Another idea is to dip them in flour, also to prevent sinking.  I settled on Chocolate Blueberry Cupcakes with a recipe calling for both bitter and sweet chocolates, goat cheese, and cinnamon.  Who needs a partner with this much comfort in a cup?

Enjoy the fresh pickings!

So many choices, the obvious leader… Chocolate, the other contenders carrot and caramel… but I wanted to choose something a little different, chili!  But don’t worry, if you love chocolate, I have actually mixed the two and gone for a chili chocolate cupcake!  In fact, why not add another C, in the form of some Cinnamon!

Throw it all together and you have these wickedly good looking cupcakes…

Cinnamon, Chili, Chocolate Mud Cupcakes

As you can tell from the photo, this cupcake is from Not Quite Nigella.  Lorraine is from down under, in fact, from my original home city of Sydney.  She is making quite a statement and has a book due out next year.  But lets get to talking about this cupcake, the mud cake is rich and dense (like a good mud cake should be) and uses Dagoba Powder for the spice mix.  Don’t fret though if you don’t have this in your local supermarket as it can easily be recreated by making your own, which is explained on the blog, along with the irresistible recipe!