Fresh Cherry Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Fresh cherries on sale for $1.99 at Safeway? I grabbed a couple of bags at first thinking that they are bad either taste wise or they were moldy, but when I got home and ate a handful, they were sweet and tangy and actually really good. The next time the boy went to Safeway, I asked him to pick me up a couple of bags again so I could bake with fresh cherries.

Damn, was that a good idea or what? I sat down and pitted all those cherries. Actually, my boyfriend did. He used a straw from Starbucks and just pitted them. It probably wasn't the most efficient way to do it, but it did pit the cherries pretty well, better than if we tried to cut them and pit them. Definitely cheaper than a cherry pitter.

The cupcake itself is a bit dense, but out of the oven, it's soft and delicious. It's not too sweet, but the cherries running through the batter provide a great little point of sweetness. I decided to top these with a cream cheese frosting - it's my favorite type! I found a great little recipe that makes just enough for about 12-15 cupcakes.

Recipe:
Fresh Cherry Cupcakes
(adapted from How Sweet It Is)
makes 12-15 cupcakes
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped cherries
1-2 tablespoons milk, if needed


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Beat butter and sugar together in the bowl of an electric mixer until fluffy, about 2-3 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla extract and mix until combined. Add flour, baking powder and salt with the mixer on low speed, then gradually increase speed. Add in chopped cherries and mix until combined. At this point, the cherries most likely have enough liquid that you don’t need to add any milk to the batter. If you batter seems dry and is not like typical cake batter, then add milk 1-2 tablespoons at a time, beating until incorporated.

Pour into cupcake liners, approximately 2 heaping tablespoons worth, and bake for 20-25 minutes or until cake is set. Let cool, then frost.


Cream Cheese Frosting:
(from Food Network)

4 ounces unsalted butter, softened
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract


In a large bowl, beat together the butter and cream cheese with an electric mixer. With the mixer on low speed, add the powdered sugar a cup at a time until smooth and creamy. Beat in the vanilla extract.

To put the whole cupcake together, pipe the frosting onto the cupcake after it has cooled. I used a 1M frosting tip from Wilton, but any will do. Afterwards, decorate using some whole cherries with their stem still on.

Carrot Bundt Cake with Cream Cheese Glaze [sms]

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays pick, Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting, was chosen by Julie of A Little Bit of Everything. I knew that I needed something amazing for a murder mystery dinner that I was going to, so I decided to make this cake into a bundt cake. It would be pretty easy to get everyone a piece at the reception along with the Lemon Meringue Cupcakes that I made.

This week was definitely really stressful. First, I had two midterms, one on Tuesday, the next on Wednesday. Then, I had somehow crashed my computer and I stayed up until about 5am to get Windows 7 from a friend. In addition, the next day I went over and stayed until about 2 - which isnt bad - to get Microsoft Office and all that. It's just been a hassle with my computer lately.

Everyone had told me that it was a wonderful and very nice carrot cake. I was unable to taste it since I had 2 ice cream sandwiches already by the time I had gotten to the cake. Everyone seemed to have really enjoyed it!

I made the original recipe for the cake, with this cream cheese glaze.

Recipe:

3oz of cream cheese, room temperature

3 T of milk

3 T of powdered sugar

Just mix all the ingredients together, until smooth. Add milk or powdered sugar to get to the consistency you want.

The Murder Mystery Dinner: at the Wedding Reception has been worked on by the Kiwanis Family committee of UC Berkeley Circle K for the past couple of weeks. We put together a plotline and characters. It was super fun to act and be someone different for a night. I was the angry drunk ex-girlfriend to the groom. We had gone out during our time at business school at Columbia. He was the only guy to ever dump me so I'm very bitter towards him. It was just fun to get dressed up and play something that I'm definitely not. I love my boyfriend, but it's fun to pretend! It was hilarious though, somehow throughout the night, everyone thought that I was pregnant which definitely was not a part of the plotline. I had a fun time Friday night, even though it is not the typical college Friday night.

Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.

Mocha Cupcakes with Kahlua Cream Cheese Frosting

Recently, quite a few of my friends are turning 21. Afterall, I'm a junior in college, it's supposed to be this year. 1989 to 2010 - we're all finally turning 21. First my boyfriend turned 21. Now more and more friend are turning the legal age to drink.

Peter and I, last spring

Since a dinner party was planned for him, 50 of us got together, ate dinner, and celebrated his birthday with him. It is my job, as always, to provide the desserts. I, of course, asked him what he wanted me to bake for him, and he wanted these mocha cupcakes. I was able to emulate most parts of the recipe, but I wanted to take some short cuts. Instead, I chose to substitute half of the grandulated sugar with brown sugar. I also just added 2 teaspoons of Kahlua to each can of Pillsbury cream cheese frosting that I bought at the store. Although it was not as strong of a Kahlua taste as I wanted, I still wanted the frosting to be able to be piped.

Check out the awesome carrier my friend got me for Christmas! Thanks Linda!

Applesauce-Spice Cupcakes [bonus msc]

These were made along with the Sweet Potato Cupcakes for the Kiwanis Family Thanksgiving dinner that were made to us by the Berkeley Kiwanians. All we had to do was bring appetizers and drinks, but being me, I asked for permission to bring desserts.

Turkey, Stuffing, and mac 'n cheese was my dinner. Although dinner was amazing, I think I stuffed myself with the appetizers of various things - chips, carrot sticks, etc. It was super delicious and super fun to be able to hang out with the Kiwanians. I think I spent a lot of my time playing Jenga with one of the Kiwanians. I remember during Fall Training Conference, I had gone downstairs where the advisors social was and they were playing Jenga - the intense version. Apparently they are very serious about their Jenga!

Onto these cupcakes, I feel like they were pretty good although pretty muffin like again. I feel like many of Martha Stewarts cupcakes are actually muffins in disguise. The cream cheese frosting was good, but it had not set in time for the dinner so I used it as a glaze. Perhaps they would be better if I had give sometime to rest and cool in the fridge.

This recipe was from the Martha Stewart Cupcakes book - page 55.

Hummingbird Cupcakes

These Hummingbird Cupcakes were made for a friend of mine, Kevin. Kevin and I have an interesting relationship. We make fun of each other, but we truly deeply like each other. He's a pretty close friend of mine, but I dont get to see him really often because he goes to school in Long Beach while I'm up here in Berkeley. We are friends, though, through Circle K so I get to see him quite often at various district events.

He had chosen these cupcakes - why? I have no idea, and I dont think he knew what he was getting into either. These fruit and nut filled cupcakes were a burst of flavor.

I feel like they were very good, but the banana in the cupcake was not very obvious. The pineapple and pecans were very obvious, but less so the banana. Maybe because I had browned them in the oven and not naturally. Who knows?

Recipe is from here. I only took 1/3 of the recipe because that was easiest for me! So yummy!

Zucchini Spiced Cupcakes [msc]

I made these about a week ago for a party that my roommates had thrown. Although I was not a hostess of the party, I thought I should put something into it. I decided not to help host the party because:
1 - I would bring like 50 friends from the organization that I'm a part of and there would not be enough room. A lot less room
2 - I dont want to pay for the alcohol. Especially because I dont drink.
3 - I dont want to clean the next morning. Basically.

But, I did decide to bake.

I intended only to do half the recipe by just grating one zucchini, but after I grated my one zucchini, it turned out to be 3 cups of zucchini so I decided to do the full recipe since I had all that zucchini. I decided to sub in hazelnuts instead of walnuts since that's basically all I had in the house. In addition, I only made 2/3 of the recipe of the cream cheese and it was PERFECT! I had finished with the frosting after frosting the last cupcake.

These were pretty good. I think everyone enjoyed them. During the party, I think most people were too drunk or too busy playing beer pong to care, but I'm glad that my roommates appreciated it - that's all that really counts. I think they tasted like carrot cake, but not. It was different and I liked it. I love the opportunity to bake and make it all work.

Make sure to check out the other bloggers too!

The recipe for this month's Cupcake Club is found on pages 44-45 of Martha Stewart's Cupcake book. Thanks to Tracey from Tracey's Culinary Adventures for choosing this.