Better Than Deja Vu—Margarita Cupcake Recipe

After finishing a mountain of cupcakes, Romina has emerged. With her "new world order" slowly setting pace, she hopefully can go to yoga more often, sleep a couple more hours a night, and have time to explore the Costco in Bountiful with me. In the meantime, she emailed me this, the coveted Margaritaville Cupcake recipe from the much popular Cupcake and Cocktail Fiesta.

"Here's the recipe. It's actually my vanilla cupcake recipe subing tequila and grand marnier for the
vanilla. If you want to make a regular layer cake, you could use any good white cake (yikes!) recipe and just add the flavoring from the recipe. But, white is not a flavor, after all. NOTE: Romina is a woman of convinction.

Les Madeleines' Margaritaville Cupcakes
4 1/2 cups cake flour, sifted * 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder * 3/4 teaspoon salt * 1 pound + 4 tablespoons unsalted butter (4 1/2 sticks) * 3 cups sugar * 6 eggs * 1 1/2 teaspoons tequila * 1 1/2 teaspoons grand marnier or triple sec or any orange liqueur * 1 1/2 cups buttermilk * zest of 2 limes * zest of 1/2 orange

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line muffin tins with liners. Sift flour, baking powder, salt. Whisk to fully
combine ingredients.

Cream the butter, sugar and zests until light and fluffy. It should be white, so it may take a while. Add the eggs one at a time, scraping the bowl between each egg. Add the tequila and orange liqueur.

Add 1/3 of flour and mix until almost fully combined. Add 1/2 of buttermilk mixing until almost fully
combined. Repeat with flour, buttermilk and ending with the last 1/3 of flour—always end with dry. Mix
until just combined.

Pipe or scoop into lined tins. Bake until golden brown (about 18 minutes for mini, 22-24 for regular and 28-30 for XL muffin tins).

For buttercream
Combine lime and orange zest, tequila, and orange liqueur to taste until it tastes like a Margarita (I usually use the same proportions as I used in the cakes). Add this to your favorite buttercream recipe (she uses an Italian meringue-based one).

To serve
Have some lime or lemon curd handy. If you really want a recipe. Shoot me an email. Otherwise, the jarred stuff is just fine. You can opt to make and decorate them yourself. Or have everyone do their own and have a messy old time as we did here.

Comments

[a l i c e]

Gurl, Koreans in Utah? WTF?! Damn, well, now I'm hooked (this is my first visit, won't be my last). You go, sista!

Signing off (for now) from Boston,

a l i c e

[dwight]

Damn you...damn you and your delicious cakes...making me all hungry at 10 in the morning...and for something so liquour filled...my mormon heritage is trying to remind me of its evils, but all I want to do is make this recipe, and as a side project, build an alcohol tolerance. How bad is that?

[Adrienne]

Boozy buttercream? Yum.

[shaz]

hi vanessa. thanks for the recipe and the link to my blog. I've been itching to use my kitchenaid mixer which is sitting pretty on my kitchen countertop.

[Rorie]

Thank you, ma'am.

[Hamlet Sweeney]

Why can't the shop on my corner sell those little babies!?

Tasty.

[Kady]

That sounds like a great party cupcake. How fun! I wish I had seen this post earlier. I just made lemon curd (all gone!) on Monday.

[vanessa]

i'm glad that everyone can enjoy this. if you make them, let me know how they turn out.

[Tea]

Thanks so much for the recipe, Vanessa! I just emailed this to a friend with the note: "these are the cupcakes I want for my next birthday." Yummy yum. I may not be able to wait that long~

[Jenni]

Did you fill these with the lime curd or put it on top and fill with buttercream? Maybe I didn't read so carefully, but my mouth is watering just thinking of them! I am a food lover in New York, who formerly lived in Utah. I love your site!

[Leona]

Mmm! I love lime margaritas, I never thought to do a cupcake version.

/goes off to create Pina Colada confection.

[susan]

can we use regular cake mix from the store and just add in the tequila and grand marnier???

[drawforjoy]

It looks delicious! I can't make such good recipes. To complicated! I have a recipe with watermelon.

[Chinese Noodles Recipe]

Wow, the cooking method of this dish is great, I'll try it later and I hope it tastes the way it look. Thanks for sharing!

[Mary]

Love it!