Peppermint Cupcakes

Since it's the holidays and all, and I LOOVE peppermint, especially when it's around chocolate, I decided to make two different minty-inspired cupcakes: candy cane cupcakes and peppermint cookies and cream cupcakes (the latter won for best cupcake at the LA Cupcake Meetup.) You can make either of these vegan as well! I actually used the cupcake recipes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World for both cakes.. even though I used butter frosting on the cookies and cream cakes. I did this because the vegan recipes are just easy to make.. and a little cheaper, since you don't have to buy all that expensive butter. I don't like to reprint recipes from folks' books, but, all you really need to do is use your favorite vanilla recipe for the candy-cane cakes and your favorite chocolate for the cookies and cream cakes.

Peppermint Cookies and Cream Cupcakes

Start with your favorite recipe for 12 chocolate cupcakes.

• For the cakes and garnish, you will need about 16 of Trader Joe's Candy Cane Joe-Joe's cookies. If you can't get these, regular Oreos will be OK. For vegans, you can use Newman's Own vegan cookies. You'll need more cookies for the frosting if you can't find the cookie crumbs.
  
• For the frosting, you'll need 1/2 cup of chocolate cookie crumbs. I think the crumbs you buy in the baking section would be best, but I couldn't find those, so I scraped the cream out of some more cookies and crushed them with a rolling pin.


• A few candy canes, crushed up, for garnish
• Real peppermint extract and real vanilla extract

1. Coarsely chop/crush 10 cookies and stir this into the batter before baking.
2. Stir the 1/2 cup of the crumbs into your favorite butter or vegan frosting, along with 1/2 t of vanilla extract and 1/2 t of peppermint extract.
3. Frost generously when the cakes are completely cooled.
4. Top each cake with 1/2 a cookie (from the remaining 6) and then sprinkle each with the candy cane crumbs.

Candy Cane Cupcakes

For these, I just used vanilla cupcakes and took a small portion of he batter and colored it red. Then, I swirled this onto each cake before I baked them.

Then, I mixed 1/2 teaspoon of peppermint extract into the frosting and sprinkled the top with crushed candy canes.