Welcome to Kitchen Queries, where the nigella.com team will answer your cooking or food related questions.  We’d love you to submit some of your recipe problems, dilemmas or queries for us to get our teeth into!

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• Christmas Cupcakes

  I adore the flavour of Nigella's Christmas Cupcakes in How To Be A Domestic Goddess (p267). As I am keen to make multiple batches this Christmas I was wondering if it's possible to make them in the food processor? Also can you suggest an alternative icing or frosting to the ready-roll icing - perhaps something incorporating Christmassy spices also? Thank you and Merry Christmas!

  Posted by Coby. Answered on 1st Dec 2011 at 12.00

  From the nigella team:

  It is possible to make the Christmas Cupcake batter in a food processor, however the cakes may come out more dense as there will be less air incorporated into the batter since you won't be creaming the butter and sugar and beating in the eggs. You can partially offset this by adding an extra 1/2 teaspoon baking powder to the recipe but we woud suggest making a test batch to see if the finished texture is to your liking.

  For the cupcakes Nigella suggests royal icing for the topping and ready to roll icing (rolled fondant) for the holly leaf decoration. You could replace the royal icing with a buttercream or a cream cheese and buttercream icing. You could also flavour the icing with something like ginger using either a pinch of ground ginger or a little of the syrup from a jar of preserved ginger (this is available in the UK but unfortunately not the US).

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