Mulled Wine Cupcakes

I've become embarrassingly obsessed with baking cupcakes over the past year.  Yes, they're a bit twee and yes, they seem to have died along with the 'Keep Calm and...' trend, but they're one of the few things I feel confident baking.  I found this recipe in my mum's Marie Claire and thought I'd give them a go.

Ta-dah! A beautifully dark and terrible photo of mulled wine.

I'll be honest here - I am not very good with wine.  Firstly, I know virtually nothing about it, meaning that I've lost count of the number of times I've stood in the middle of the wine aisle on the phone to my dad asking what dry actually means.  Secondly, I have the unfortunate habit of going out to a party or the pub and thinking, "Yes! Wine is exactly what I want!" only to find myself two glasses in and well on the way to getting completely hammered.  Anyway, my point is that I've never done mulled wine before.  Luckily for me, it's pretty straightforward. Shlop everything (wine, orange peel, cinnamon stick/s, star anise)  into a pan and heat. Unfortunately, the wine smell is fairly strong, and by the time I'd finished making the cupcakes I had a headache and wanted to chuck the whole lot away.

Yuuummm...

However, I resisted the temptation (mostly because I'd gone to so much effort in the first place) and ended up with some fairly decent cupcakes.  My decorating skills, however, are somewhat lacking and so almost every batch of cupcakes I make look like the cakes kids bring back from school cake stalls.  The actual cake was dense and rich but not overwhelming, and the subtle mulled wine flavour went really well with the cocoa powder in them.  Hopefully I haven't thrown the magazine containing the recipe away, because I may well give them another try next Christmas.