The holidays are approaching! Celebrate a sweet new year with honey whiskey cupcakes.

I used a potluck dinner party I promised to bring dessert for as an opportunity to test a new Rosh Hashanah recipe before the holidays.  So long traditional honey cake, hello Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey.

After googling around a bit I was surprised to find that there weren’t a lot of already posted options for honey whiskey cupcakes, so thank you Creative Culinary for the post. I started with their recipe as the foundation, and made some tweaks based on what I had in the kitchen already/personal preferences, and it still turned out great!

One of the biggest changes I made was to not make the frosting portion from scratch. I know a lot of people love or don’t mind making it from scratch, but I kinda feel the way I do about frosting like I do about hot dogs…I love it but don’t always love those ingredients. So I passed on all of the extra heavy cream, butter, and sugar that was in their recipe and incorporated store bought where I could look at the label’s calorie count.

For 24 (two trays of) cupcakes:

Ingredients

For the cupcakes:

• 1 1/2 cups butter, softened – I used 3/4 cup salted and 3/4 unsalted butter
• 1 3/4 cup sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 cups flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 6 Tbsp organic skim/nonfat milk
• 7 Tbsp Jack Daniels Honey Whiskey

For the tipsy toppings:

• 1 container Betty Crocker Rich & Creamy Vanilla Frosting
• 2 Tbsp Jack Daniels Honey Whiskey for the frosting
• 1/2 cup Jack Daniels Honey Whiskey for the drizzle
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter

Preheat oven to 350F and line your muffin tins with cupcake liners.

Use a stand mixer to cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and mix just to incorporate.

Switch to your whisk attachment and whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder.
Add the whiskey and milk until just combined.

Divide the batter evenly into the cups; approximately 2/3 full for each cup.

Bake for 20 minutes; test with a toothpick to ensure the inside is cooked through. Cool completely on wire cooling racks before frosting.

For the frosting:

Empty the frosting contents into a small mixing bowl. Slowly pour in the honey whiskey, a little at a time, stirring constantly so that the frosting absorbs the mixture and doesn’t get too liquidy.

When finished, transfer the mixture to a pastry bag or Ziploc bag to use for piping. I use the Ziploc bag hack all of the time – just cut the corner off of the bottom of the bag after filling it with the frosting. Super easy!

For the drizzle:

Add the brown sugar, honey whiskey, and butter together in a small pan, bring to a boil and boil for 1-2 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool before drizzling on cupcakes.

Some notes – this quantity is the same that was originally posted for 12 cupcakes. I originally doubled it thinking I would need more for the 24 but that was a big mistake; I had soooo much left over it was a bit of a waste. Don’t get me wrong, I loved using some of the leftover drizzle on french toast the next day (delish!), but I still had tons after that. So much so that even for the 24 cupcakes I think you will also have leftover for french toast 🙂