Sunday, June 2, 2013

Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes

I'm not going to call myself a bad blogger, just an absent one - life takes over like that sometimes!  Apart from my daughter's upcoming wedding on June 22nd, the other event that took a lot of planning and work was her bridal shower on April 28th.  Baking was only part of all the work, which started with *what* I wanted to bake.

Megan's favourite fruit is the cherry, so I wanted to incorporate it into one of the desserts.  My first thought was a variation of Black Forest Cherry cake.  Most people I know love it - I'm not one of them.  When I was younger my mother made it a LOT.  As I got older, I was surprised with more than one bakery version of this cake, which was too much for my liking!  It's not just the whole combo that I dislike, but I also can't stand whipped cream.  Pretty strange for a baker to admit that, but we all have our preferences and it's never been one of mine.  So I kept Googling for a chocolate cherry combo and I found this recipe at The Cupcake Project blog - the link will take you directly to the recipe.





I made the cupcakes (on the red 2-tiered stand) in a mini size, so that everyone could sample lots of the goodies we made.  They are a very dense, rich chocolate with the flavour of cherry added by using Maraschino cherry liquid.  Boy, were they a hit, especially with our bride-to-be!

The icing was pretty, light pink since cherry preserves are used in the frosting.  I cheated completely with the frosting and didn't make it from scratch.  Betty Crocker came to my rescue with prepared cream cheese frosting and I added only the jelly portion of the preserves (I think some small cherry bits snuck in too) and mixed up a full container of the frosting.  As a combo, there was no cloying sweetness to them, just a nice balance of rich chocolate with cherry.

My lovely daughter Sarah, the Maid of Honour at the upcoming wedding, baked the Martha Stewart gluten free brownies pictured above and I made mini meringues with vanilla chips inside and pink pearl dragees as a decoration.  We had guests with dietary restrictions at the shower, so everything was labelled to avoid any confusion.

The shower was a blast and I sent lots of goodies home with everyone so that I can fit into my Mother of the Bride dress in under three weeks!