Christmas red wine cupcake

Today Catholics all over the world have a magical holiday - Christmas! From me not only the best wishes, but also a new recipe for Christmas cake, which will delight you not only with its taste, delicate texture, but also with a fabulous aroma. This is a chocolate pastry with hints of red wine, nut-raisin islands and an orange aftertaste.

Like any other Christmas baked goods, this mouth-watering cupcake is prepared with the addition of aromatic spices. Here you can find rich coriander, spicy cardamom, warming ginger, and delicate nutmeg. Optionally, you can add your favorite spices - ground cinnamon, cloves, allspice ...

If there is no dry red wine at home, you can replace it, for example, with table or dessert wine. But in this case, you may have to reduce the amount of sugar, if you do not like too sweet baked goods. Instead of a walnut, almonds, hazelnuts, or whatever you like best are perfect. You can use not bitter chocolate, but milk chocolate (then I would add less sugar per tablespoon). In general, don't be afraid - experiment!

Ingredients

• Butter (250 grams)
• Sugar (190 grams)
• Wheat flour of the highest grade (180 grams)
• Chicken eggs (4 pieces)
• Dry red wine (125 milliliters)
• Walnut (70 grams)
• Raisin (60 grams)
• Bitter chocolate (50 grams)
• Orange (1 piece)
• Baking powder (2.5 teaspoons)
• Cocoa powder (2 teaspoons)
• Coriander (0.5 teaspoon)
• Ginger dry (0.5 teaspoon)
• Cardamom (0.5 teaspoon)
• Nutmeg (1 pinch)

Directions

1. The recipe for this delicious and aromatic cake includes the following ingredients: premium wheat flour, granulated sugar, dry red wine, butter (at least 72% fat), medium-sized chicken eggs (45-50 grams each), orange, peeled walnuts , seedless raisins, dark chocolate, unsweetened cocoa powder, baking powder and dry ground spices (cardamom, ginger, coriander and nutmeg).
2. The first step is to prepare some food and turn on the oven 180 degrees in parallel. Put 60 grams of washed raisins, 40 grams of butter and 30 milliliters of dry red wine in a small saucepan or stewpan. Wash the orange thoroughly, dry it and use a grater to remove the zest - put it in a saucepan. Squeeze the juice from the fruit and pour 60 milliliters into a bowl. We use the rest of the juice in other dishes or just drink it. We put the saucepan over medium heat and, stirring, boil the contents for a couple of minutes after boiling. Leave to cool to room temperature.
3. In the meantime, fry peeled nuts (70 grams) in a dry frying pan, in the oven or microwave, so that they become crispy and aromatic. Let us cool them down and grind them in any convenient way. Personally, I like to do this in a blender, but you can chop the nuts with a knife. Choose the degree of grinding according to your taste - it can be coarsely or completely into small crumbs.
4. Let's prepare a dry cake mix. In a separate bowl, combine 180 grams of sifted premium wheat flour, 2.5 teaspoons of baking powder, 2 teaspoons of cocoa powder, chopped nuts and spices (cardamom, ginger, coriander and nutmeg).
5. Mix everything thoroughly with a spoon or fork.
6. Next, you need to grind 210 grams of soft butter (take it out of the refrigerator in 2-3 hours) and 190 grams of granulated sugar.
7. We grind everything together for several minutes (you can use a whisk or a mixer), then add 4 eggs to the mixture one at a time and beat the mass.
8. When the last egg is beaten, pour in the dry mixture from step 5. Mix everything thoroughly with a spoon or spatula.
9. In step 2, we boiled raisins, oil, wine, juice and orange zest, which have already cooled down.
10. Pour the contents of the saucepan into a bowl of dough and mix everything.
11. Next, pour 95 milliliters of dry red wine and mix everything again until smooth.
12. Now melt 50 grams of dark chocolate quickly. You can melt chocolate not only in a water bath (there is another pot of boiling water at the bottom of the saucepan with chocolate), but also in the microwave (best in the Defrost mode - it is more gentle). In general, it doesn't matter how you do it, the main thing is not to overheat the chocolate, otherwise it will curl up and go in lumps.
13. Add the melted chocolate to the dough and stir in gently.
14. The result should be a moderately thick and very flavorful Christmas cake batter.
15. We take a suitable baking dish (I have a size of 28x8x7 centimeters - length / width / height), the bottom and walls of which we cover with a piece of parchment paper. We spread the dough in the form, leveling it with a spoon or spatula. To prevent the paper from moving, I temporarily fix it to the walls with ordinary clothespins, which I simply remove before baking.
17. Step 16
18. Christmas
19. We cook our Christmas cake in a preheated oven at an average level of 50-70 minutes at 180 degrees. Cooking time depends on the size of the mold and the characteristics of the oven. We check the readiness with a wooden skewer or a toothpick, which should come out of the dough dry.
20. Let the finished Christmas cake stand in the form for about 10 minutes, after which we take it out, remove the parchment and let it cool completely.
21. Transfer to a serving platter and decorate as desired.
22. I poured melted chocolate on the finished chocolate cake, garnished with cranberries, slices of fresh orange and rosemary sprigs.