Amarettini Cupcakes

In my recent post about the annual Schrottwichteln with my friends, I mentioned that I had spent Thursday evening baking, and also said that I was going to show you what in another post.

I made cupcakes of my own creation, combining amarettini (the small almondy biscuits), amaretto (the almond liqueur) and dark chocolate.
The recipe I used as a base is this one, but I changed it in several ways.

Here are the ingredients:

I checked the weight of the dark chocolate and the amarettini and used less flour and sugar for the dough accordingly.

The biscuits and chocolate I put in a zip-up plastic bag and smashed them to (not too small) crumbles with a rolling pin.

At first, I found the dough was still a bit too liquid, so I added a little more flour until it looked and felt right.

Then I filled the cups about 2/3 and put it in the oven.

They looked ready to me!

There was enough dough for a second tray; all in all, I made 20 cupcakes.

For the frosting (or topping), I used only half the amount from the original recipe, as I remembered how it seemed to never end. I do not own a piping (or icing) bag, but the creamy frosting can be just as easily applied using a tea spoon. Each cupcake was topped with an amarettino.
(There was a tablespoon of amaretto in the frosting as well as in the dough.)

My friends seemed to like them well enough. I served them with vanilla ice cream shaped like stars, on a dark chocolate base and dusted with cinammon - of course bought, not home-made. You can see the star-shaped ice cream here if you like.

Since there had been only six of us on Friday, I still had cupcakes left for Sunday, when O.K. and I had invited my parents and sister over for coffee and cake. And there were still two or three left after that, which I gave to my favourite neighbour, the elderly lady whose garden I see from my kitchen window.

Last night, I made another batch of cupcakes. These will be taken to O.K.'s today on the train, so that we can eat them with the family on Sunday. Again, they are different; this time, there is dairy milk chocolate with pistachios inside, and the frosting is with cinnamon and cocoa, a nice chocolaty brown. I hope they have turned out alright - I didn't try them!