…And while I haven’t the pleasure of enjoying a Magnolia bakery cupcake, I feel that this quote really sums up how I feel about weekends and baked goods.

“Let’s hit up Magnolia and mack on some cupcakes
No doubt, that bakery’s got all the bomb frosting.
I love those cupcakes like McAdams loves Gosling
2 no 6 no 12, bakers dozen!
I told you that I’m crazy for these cupcakes, cousin!”

…. My inspiration for these cupcakes came from my original plan for pancakes that I wanted to make for breakfast.

I tried to wake up early today. I really did. I even got out of bed, walked into the dining room, went to my cookbook shelf and removed my breakfast cookbook and went and sat on the couch. My original goal had been to study the pancake recipe and then go into the kitchen to make it. I’ve been trying to make the perfect pancakes, so I’ve been tinkering with the ingredients a bit. So I start off my breakfast endeavors by studying the recipe and my notations that I’ve scribbled next to the ingreneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comdients list, and formulate a plan from there.

Well, I never got that far. I got to the living room, sat down and promptly fell asleep. At some point, I woke up, went and got a blanket, and came back to the couch and laid down.

By the time I actually became coherent, it was 10am and my husband had already started playing video games (which is his default Sunday morning “Pre-Andrea wake up” activity.) So I decided to scratch the plan and make toast instead. It was good toast, but it just didn’t satiate the specific craving I was having. I had planned on making cherry and chocolate chunk pancakes. So… I had to figure something else out.

…But what else would taste good with cherries and chocolate chunks in them?

CUPCAKES!!!
Now introducing- Cherry and chocolate chunk cupcakes.

A whole herd of ‘em!

In order to eat one, you have to separate one from the pack…

See the little bit of chocolate peeking through the muffin-top?

The chocolate chunks spread nicely throughout the cupcake, they didn’t all settle at the bottom, which was nice.

HUGE CHUNKS OF CHOCOLATE AND CHERRIES!

..What a tease..

There was so much chocolate and cherry inside, they didn’t need much icing. A little dab’ll do ya!
I’d have to say, I ate one of these, and I felt whole again. I wanted to eat more, but I’ve been trying to limit my weekly cupcake intake. My husband on the other hand.. yeah, he had a few. He’ll take the rest to work tomorrow. His co-workers have started looking forward to their Monday cupcakes.

I used a new recipe for these cupcakes. Instead of a while cake, where you eliminate the egg yolks, I made a yellow cake. I’d have to say that was probably a mistake. While I enjoyed that the darker colour limited the stark contrast between the cake and the chocolate and cherry, I think the extra egginess only made the cake more dense, where I would have enjoyed a little fluffier consistancy. They were good though, and I might just be extra picky because of my personal cupcake intake limitations. I want every cupcake to be the best it can be.

I remember back in the day when cherry chip cake was the cake of choice. I loved it when my mom made cherry chip cake. sure.. the little cherry bits were freeze dried, and the chocolate “chips” were really just “chocolatey” chips, which were also like little chocolate pellets that made chocolate stains inside the cake when it baked, I still loved it.

These were like a little bit of nostalgia for me. I love that about certain foods. It certainly made this lazy Sunday a good one.

So, without any further adeiu’ The recipe-

1/2 cup softened butter
2/3 cup granulated white sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons marachino cherry juice
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup milk (if you use all purpose flour instead of cake flour, you may need another 1/4 of milk)
1/4 natural marachino cherries, chopped roughly
1/2 cup high quality chocolate chunks. (milk or dark chocolate works well with this recipe)

Cream the butter and sugar together until soft and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, whisking well between eggs.

Mix in the vanilla and cherry juice. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add this dry mixture to the egg mixture in three parts, alternating with the addition of the milk. If the batter is too thick, add a bit more milk, it will not hurt, just don’t exceed an additional 1/2 cup milk.

At last, add the cherries and chocolate. fold in lightly.

Spoon into papered muffin cups and bake at 350 for about 15-20 minutes or until the tops are light golden brown.

I didn’t fill these particular cakes. I felt there was enough stuff in ‘em already. All I did was ice them with a bit of chocolate buttercream and top with a cherry and some chocolate jimmies.

Chocolate buttercream recipe-

2 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
3 tablespoons cocoa
1/4 cup butter
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the confectioners sugar, cocoa and butter. Add the heavy cream and vanilla and whip for a few minutes until fluffy. If mixture is too thick, add a tablespoon of HOT water. Whip for another minute or two.

SO GOOD. Seriously. Everyone loved these little guys.

So get in the kitchen and make some!

-A.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 1:36 am and is filed under April 2007, The Cupcakes!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.