Wine and Cheese Cupcakes: White Edition

This is exciting! A new baking post! For the first time months! For the first time in forever (not really, but I just really wanted to slip in a vague Frozen reference).
I didn't have much time to bake while I was at home the past two weeks, so I had to plan the one day I set aside for any cooking/baking fun carefully. Since cupcakes brought me into the world of baking, it seemed appropriate to rekindle my baking with some.

I first saw this recipe on Cupcake Project back last summer and instantly knew that I wanted to try baking them. It seems that I continue to have a strong attraction to baking with alcohol, probably simply because its still a novelty for my oh so youthful 20s. But I have a feeling these white wine and goat cheese cupcakes will likely be baked again even if cupcakes or alcohol baking has lost its novelty for me in a few years. These are definitely some of my best baked goods of 2014. Well, this is mostly due to the fact that I was on an ice cream making spree earlier (which, rest assured, will continue).

As I was skeptical of my baking abilities, I sought to use the cheapest of white wines. Yep, the two buck chuck. I can't even remember the real name of that stuff anymore (I want to say Charles Schwab, but thats a bank that I'm pretty sure doesn't do a joint business in wine). I don't really actually know anything about wine quality, but I do know that the specific taste of wine was distinctively obvious in the cake. There was some goat cheese added to the cake batter as well, but that flavor was a bit less noticeable, or straight up lacking. I get the sense that the cake flavor varies a bit with the type of white wine used, so this might be a fun area of further exploration.
The frosting is a pretty simple variation of a typical frosting, except with goat cheese, butter and powdered sugar. I found that the frosting was a bit on the sweet side with a cream cheese tang. However, I ended up using only about 75% of the amount of goat cheese called for in the recipe so this may have been why the frosting was more on the sweet rather than tangy side.

I'm still working a bit on my frosting and decorating game a bit. The goat cheese frosting had cream cheese frosting symptoms and was a bit droopy in the first few minutes after I piped it, but it crusted fairly well after five minutes so that it stopped leaking. Though the leaking effect does have its own sort of charm to it.

Recipe from my one true baking love, Cupcake Project. Given the fidelity of the wine and cheese combo in everyday fancy dining appetizers, there must be endless ways to adapt wine and cheese into a sweet cupcake version. Cupcake Project has a chocolate/red wine cupcake that is also on my baking list, so we can do a little comparison in the future. :)