Gloverly Cupcakes

Last weekend I visited my sister-in-law Tams and her hubby Pete, they got married and bought a house together last year and this was our 1st visit, so I thought it would be a nice idea to make some ‘new home’ cupcakes. I chose a yummy looking chocolate cherry cupcake recipe to try out.

I doubled the recipe and realised I didn’t have enough cherry jam, but I did have a jar of cocktail cherries, so I decided to adapt the recipe and use a mixture of both – it was pretty good! This is adapted from Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess

For the cupcakes

125 grams soft unsalted butter

100 grams dark chocolate (broken into pieces)

150 grams morello cherry jam

150g cocktail cherries from a jar with some of the syrup

150 grams caster sugar

1 pinch of salt

2 large eggs (beaten)

150 grams self-raising flour

For the buttercream

400g icing sugar

100g cocoa powder

160g butter

50ml milk

• Preheat the oven to 180ºC/gas mark 4/350ºF. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with cases – you might need a couple extra.
• Put the butter in a heavy-bottomed pan on the heat to melt. When nearly completely melted, stir in the chocolate. Leave for a moment to begin softening, then take the pan off the heat and stir with a wooden spoon until the butter and chocolate are smooth and melted. Now add the cherry jam, sugar, salt and eggs. Stir with a wooden spoon and when all is pretty well amalgamated stir in the flour.
• Scrape and pour into the muffin cases in their tin and bake for 25 minutes. Cool in the tins for 1 min before removing and placing on a cooling rack.
• When the cupcakes are cool, beat the icing sugar, cocoa powder and butter together on a very slow speed until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. I always put a tea towel over the top of my mixer to prevent icing sugar going everywhere! Then slowly add the milk. Once it’s all been added increase the speed and beat on high for 5 minutes until light and fluffy.

The decorations didn’t take too long, I copied a design I found on Pinterest. I used small flower and heart plunge cutters and a stamp that you can slide individual letters onto to create word to press into the icing. The cakes were lovely and moist and went down well with a cup of tea on Saturday afternoon!