Daylily and Wine Festival Cupcakes

This past Sunday, I went to the Daylily and Wine Festival. This is an annual event that I have gone to for pretty much as long as I can remember and is always on a hot summer weekend at a semi-famous flower nursery. While I can't drink wine from the 20 0r so different wineries sponsored at the event, there are beautiful garden and lots of different food and jewelry tents to visit. While at the event this year, I found various jewelry vendors and some pretty cool vendors that had different sauces and spices for any meal.

This cupcake was inspired by the event and the wine in particular. This is a chocolate wine cake with a cream cheese filling and a whipped cream frosting with a flower decoration. Since the alcohol cooks out in these as they bake, they are safe for those under 21 but it also makes it important to use good wine since the flavors reduce and add richness to the cake.

Ingredients:

Cake

1 box yellow cake mix

4 egg whites

1-1/3c. nice Merlot wine

1/3c. canola oil

4t. cocoa powder

2/3c. semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted

Filling

1 (8oz.) block cream cheese, softened

1/2c. sugar

splash of almond extract (careful, this stuff is strong!)

Frosting

1 tub cool whip lite

1/2c. sour cream

2T. powdered sugar

1/4t. lemon zest

Flower

12 yellow starbursts

72 mini marshmallows

red, pink or purple decorating sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 and line 2 cupcake pans with 24 paper liners
2. Place all ingredients for cake in mixing bowl and beat on med. until well blended and lump free
3. Using an ice-cream scoop, fill each cupcake pan evenly with batter. Bake for 15-17min or until passes the toothpick test. Cool completely.
4. While cupcakes bake, make the filling by mixing cream cheeses in mixer until lump free and add sugar and almond extract. Scoop mixture into plastic bag, creating a make-shift piping bag. Refrigerate until ready to fill cupcakes.
5. For frosting, place cool whip in large bowl and gently fold in remaining frosting ingredients, being careful not to "deflate" cool whip. Refrigerate until ready to frost.
6. To assemble cupcakes, make an X in the top of each cupcake. Using piping bag with filling, quickly snip a small part of the corner where the filling is concentrated. Place the tip of the bag in the X and gently squeeze the bag until filling starts to rise out of the X in the cupcake. Scoop frosting on top and smooth with an off set spatula. To make the center of the flower, cut a starburst in half and then each half into 3 strips. Arrange 3 of the strips in the center of the cupcake. For the petals, cut 3 marshmallows in half and dip the "sticky" part of each half face down into the decorating sugar. Lift and assemble around the starburst center. Repeat with remaining cupcakes.
7. Enjoy!