In September of 2009, I started a cupcake adventure. If you haven't read about it yet, you can do so here. ***
With Valentine's Day just 48 hours away, why not whip up a batch of these for your sweetheart?
I started by combining all the dry ingredients.
The filling was made from cream cheese, a dab of sugar, and a few tablespoons of maraschino cherry syrup. I wish I had gotten a photo of this after I'd gotten the lumps worked out! Kinda looks like pink cottage cheese. Eww.
Dry ingredients were mixed together with the wet ones to form the batter.
And sour cream provided the moisture.
Mmm. Lookin' good so far!
Bake right up, you little loveys!
A pretty pretty batch. Fairly uniform, which is good! I must be learning a thing or two now that I've made about 30 batches. :)
Each cupcake was 'cored' to make room for the filling.
A teaspoon of the cream cheese filling as well as a pitless (that's important) maraschino cherry filled in the hole.
And the top plug was replaced.
I did that a dozen more times and voila! A set of filled cupcakes ready to be iced!
The icing used the remainder of the cream cheese filling, plus some powdered sugar and some more maraschino cherry syrup.
How pretty! You could stop there and people would still be delighted to try them. But why stop there?! ;)
I added a little cocoa powder to a mesh strainer (you DEFINITELY want to do this over the sink!)
And lightly dusted each cupcake with a slight tap of cocoa (this takes some practice...some got a heavier dusting than others).
Since these were for my cousin's birthday and not for Valentine's Day, I wrote him a message on the serving plate.
After being dusted, each cupcake was topped with another cherry. Aren't they just so cute?!
If this doesn't scream "VALENTINE'S DAY!", I don't know a dessert that would.
I mean, look at that cherry! The cherry alone is gorgeous enough, but then look what's under it!
And what's under it tastes extra, extra yummy. Ask me how I know.
