I’ve been brainstorming the Peppermint Stick Cupcake recipe for awhile now and am way excited to have finally executed it.

I was initially going to make this layered vanilla and red velvet, but decided that was a little more than I wanted to take on.  Instead I made 2 batches of regular white cake batter and designated one vanilla (white) and one peppermint (red).  After that layering the batter was pretty straight forward, albeit a little time-consuming.

The ganache was more of a sudden moment of inspiration than a long thought-through process.  I had assumed for awhile that I would just make some vanilla icing with a peppermint stick garnish and be done with it, but while doing some random reading on icings I came across ganaches (ganachi?) and though to myself, “of course!”.  So the plain ‘ole vanilla icing turned into a white chocolate ganache.

How do they taste?  Well, I can’t say that these are my favorite cupcakes; honestly, there’s just not enough chocolate in them to hold my attention for too long.  They also made my kitchen crazy minty for a few days, which was interesting.  But even so, they’re a tasty treat and a nice departure from a strictly-chocolate diet.  Plus they’re very pretty.  I’ll try to get a cross-section picture and we can see how well my layering turned out. ^_^

The best part about this is that my ideas became finalized at the perfect time: my company’s holiday outing is on Tuesday, and I am now completely prepared to take on their baking contest.  I have little recollection of last year’s contestants (I had just started at the company), so have no idea how stiff my competition will be, but regardless I had a huge amount of fun with this recipe and am thrilled to share it with everybody.  Wish me luck!

Peppermint Stick Cupcake Recipe with White Chocolate Ganache

Makes 2 dozen cupcakes.

Cupcake Ingredients (modified from allrecipes.com – Simple White Cake):

Most of the ingredients here are “x2” because you make 2 batches of this: one for white stripes, one for red stripes.

• 1 cup sugar (x2)
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened (x2)
• 2 eggs (x2)
• 1 tsp peppermint extract
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour (x2)
• 1 3/4 tsp baking powder (x2)
• 1/2 cup milk (x2)
• 3 tsp red food coloring

Cupcake Instructions:

1. Cream together the butter and sugar
2. Beat in eggs
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour and baking powder.
4. Add the flour/baking powder to the creamed ingredients in batches.
5. Add milk and mix until smooth.
6. In the first batch, add the vanilla extract and mix.
7. In the second batch, add the peppermint extract and red food coloring and mix.

Ganache Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup heavy cream
• 8 oz white chocolate, chopped

Ganache Instructions:

1. Chop up the chocolate and put in a medium bowl.
2. Heat heavy cream until just boiling.
3. Pour the heavy cream onto the chocolate and whisk until lumps are gone.  If lumps persist, let the chocolate melt for a few minutes, then whisk again.
4. Let for around 30 minutes so the ganache isn’t completely liquid-y.

Cupcake Assembly:

1. Load your batter colors into 2 separate bags (or tubes, or however you typically dispense your batter).
2. Set cupcake liners in your tin.
3. Taking one color (whichever you want to be on the bottom) and in each of your cupcake liners dispense a layer of batter about 1/4 inch deep.  I recommend you pipe your batter directly into the center and then push the batter out towards the edges.  I used a butter knife to spread the cupcake layers out evenly since it’s not really enough batter to crawl to the edges on its own.
4. Repeat step #3 with the other color (whichever you want to be on top).
5. Repeat steps #2 and #3 one more time each, giving you 4 layers.
6. Bake for 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees, rotating the pan half way through.
7. Let the cupcakes cool completely before pouring the ganache over top.  Be sure to put the cupcakes on a surface you don’t mind getting messy – the ganache will drip!

I added chopped up peppermint Hershey Kisses on the top of mine.  Nom!