Long Island Tea Cupcakes, Kentucky Style!

Yes, it's that time again. Sometimes I wonder why I even attempt to compete with such fabulous bakers when I simply piddle with my ideas. The thing is, truly, I don't care if I win or not. Baking cupcakes is a nice break in the action for me. It's creative and a stress reliever (even though I should be writing at the moment.)

This month's secret ingredient is soda pop! A couple of days ago, an idea popped (pun intended!) into my head and I knew just want I wanted to do. To my surprise, the recipe worked fabulously. I'm really proud of these.

The cake is light and fluffy and moist. The burnt brown sugar glaze adds the sugar kick to round out the flavor. The secret soda pop ingredient I used was Sierra Mist; however, there really is another secret ingredient that makes this cake take your breath away. Alcohol!

I decided to make Long Island Tea Cupcakes, Kentucky Style. Here is my recipe:

Long Island Tea Cupcakes, Kentucky Style!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

½ cup butter, softened

1 ½ cup sugar, white

3 eggs

2 cups flour

3 ½ t. baking power

1 t. salt

1 shot bourbon

1 shot rum

1 shot triple sec

Sierra Mist (approximately ½ cup)

1 t. vanilla

Sift dry ingredients together in one bowl – flour, salt, baking powder. Cream together sugar and butter.Add eggs one at a time and beat with creamed mixture.In a liquid measure, put one shot each of bourbon, rum, and triple sec. Add Sierra Mist up to the one cup line. Add the 1 t. of vanilla.Starting with the flour, alternately add and beat the dry and liquid ingredients into the butter-sugar-egg mixture. (about 1/3 of each at a time) Fill cupcake cups and bake at 350ºF for @16 minutes. Cool.

Brown Sugar Glaze

½ t. Lemon extract

1 ½ cups brown sugar

2-3 T Sierra Mist

¼ stick butter

Bring lemon extract, brown sugar and Sierra Mist to a boil in saucepan. Reduce heat and let simmer, stirring constantly, for about five minutes or until liquid is reduced some. Add the butter, continue stirring and simmer for several more minutes until sauce is dark brown and thick, a little over a soft-ball stage. Remove from heat and ladle over cupcakes. Let cool.

Once again, I'll compete for the Iron Cupcake Challenge with this entry. Watch the blog for voting days. I could win these prizes!

The April ETSY PRIZE-PACK is from artists:

• A creation by FRUITFLYPIE, http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=16748
• a pair of cupcake earrings from LOTS OF SPRINKLES at http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=6057281.
• a sweet surprise from Sweet Cuppin' Cakes Cupcakery, http://www.acupcakery.com/
  
• PLUS, IronCupcake:Earth can not forget our good friend, CAKESPY, http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5243382, who is now going to be doing a piece for our winner each month until further notice - sweet!

Last and certainly not least, don’t forget our corporate prize providers: HEAD CHEFS by FIESTA PRODUCTS, http://www.fiestaproducts.com, HELLO CUPCAKE by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson, http://blog.hellocupcakebook.com, JESSIE STEELE APRONS http://www.jessiesteele.com; TASTE OF HOME books, http://www.tasteofhome.com; a t-shirt from UPWITHCUPCAKES.COM http://www.upwithcupcakes.com/. Iron Cupcake:Earth is sponsored in part by 1-800-Flowers, http://www.1800flowers.com .

Thanks to Iron Cupcake: Earth for providing this challenge!