Cherry Cupcakes

I think I'll bake some cupcakes today, more for the purpose of using up some cake mix in the pantry than for any other reason.  My waistline certainly doesn't need it!  Of course, it also gives me something to post about.  Except that I don't think these will be anything fantastic, just your basic, slightly-doctored-up cake mix with frosting.  I'm even going to use one of those little packets of frosting flavors in my home made buttercream.

However, if I'm to be completely honest with myself, I think I'm procrastinating finishing the purse pattern I told you all about a few weeks ago.  In defense of myself, I did take photos of the green bag I posted pictures of in order to add them into the pattern, but many of them turned out so blurry I need to make it again just to take the pictures!  And, oh, I can come up with many reasons to put that task off-I don't have the yarn I want to use (bought it weeks ago now), my husband isn't available to help me take the new pictures (which was the problem before, and I tried to take them on my own), my nail polish is chipped (that one seems to be a constant problem)-as you can tell, I'm pretty good with the excuses!

So, on to the cupcakes.  I mentioned that I want to use a frosting flavor--Duncan Hines has put out these little packets of fun flavors to use with their canned frosting.  Well, I have to admit--I hate canned frosting!  I know of very few people who actually prefer the taste of canned over home made frosting-if you're one of them, ignore this part!  Feel free to use the canned stuff!

If you're more like me, though, then proceed.  :-)  You can use the flavor packets with your own home made frosting with great success.  Today I'm going to use the cherry vanilla flavoring.  I've never tried it before, but I think it's a great choice for the first day of spring!

In my experience with the Duncan Hines frosting flavors, they are quite sweet.  Definitely for the kid in us!  I'm going to try and down play that a bit in the cupcake.  I'm using Betty Crocker yellow cake mix, and I'm going to change it up a bit like I usually do when using cake mixes.  Simply replace the water with an equal amount of whole milk (if all you have is low-fat, that's okay too!) and replace the oil with melted butter.  Please do use real butter!  In addition, I'm going to add in some chopped maraschino cherries and pure almond flavoring.

I debated a bit with myself on the cherries--maraschino cherries are hardly "real" cherry flavor!  I have some home made cherry jam that I might have added--but then, I thought it might also add extra sweetness, and I don't want that.  After tasting a bit of the batter, I think I made the right choice.  It reminded me of the cherries in Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream!  MMM!  I wish I had some dark chocolate chunks--must remember that for the next time!

   


Anyway, I added about a teaspoon of the almond flavoring.  Almonds and cherries really go good together, a very classic combination.

By the way, did you notice my nice orange-ish batter?  That's because I thought I'd try adding a little of the cherry juice to color it a bit, and the red combined with the nice dark yolks from my hen's eggs and made that lovely orange.  Oh well, no biggie.  I might have avoided that if I wanted to substitute 2 egg whites for each egg.

All ready to go into the oven!

Now for the frosting.  I do make a pretty traditional American butter cream, although sometimes I'll play around with the ratios of ingredients.  Today I'm only going to use 1/2 cup of butter instead of a whole cup ;-)

 Cream it, then add the powdered sugar, about 3-4 cups.  I use a Kitchen-Aid stand mixer, which is pretty heavy duty, but if you are using something with less power, you might want to add a tablespoon of milk to make it a little easier on yourself.

Then add in the frosting flavor:

And add in milk to achieve the right consistency.  How much is that, you may ask?  Depends on how you want to frost--just a little milk (try a teaspoon at a time) if you want to make those nice swirls with a pastry bag and decorative tip.  Add more milk if you want to spread it smooth with a metal spatula or knife.  You can even make it thin enough to dip the tops of the cupcakes into the frosting and cover them that way--the choice is yours!  If you go too far with the milk, simply add more powdered sugar, one tablespoon at a time, to get it back to where you want it.

Truth-telling time:  I found out I didn't have as much powdered sugar as I thought AFTER I started this recipe, so I simply used up all I had, and then thinned out the frosting so that I could stretch it as far as I could!

Frosting--yum!

Definitely needs a cherry on top!

Time to taste--drum roll, please!

Oh my, this is good!

I think I stumbled onto something here--the almond flavoring in the cake is soooo good, it brings up the cake mix several notches in my book!  I bought this through one of the best online baking sites: King Arthur Flour. They have excellent ingredients, even if the shipping is expensive if you live on the West coast like me!  They do have free shipping offers from time to time, however; be on the lookout!

I only added about 1/3 cup of chopped cherries, and they are very yummy in this cake, and I could see adding about twice that amount.

But, even as they are, they are delicious!

The frosting is pretty good, too.  I think I'd play around with using the maraschino cherry juice to flavor my buttercream the next time, and save myself the trouble of an extra ingredient.  But then, that flavoring packet isn't too bad--I'll have to try it without and see which is better.

Next time, I'll have on hand some dark chocolate chunks to throw in--oh, my, wouldn't that be good!

That's it for today...I think I'll have another cupcake!

Vanessa