Darling Cherry Darlings

My tinkering with Cupcake Project's wonderfully dense orange cupcakes has yielded some vaguely cherry cupcakes that I've been referring to as Cherry Darlings in my mind since I first decided to make a cherry cupcake. I realize they're damn near identical to the cupcakes in the previous entry, but let me note some differences:

1. They are a sweet shade of magenta.

2. The frosting? A hint of pink, not just white.

3. There's a little heart, see? Totally different cupcakes.

Okay, so when thinking of cherry flavored things, I was presented with some decisions. What I ended up going with was not any sort of fresh cherry flavor, but rather, the more juvenile cherry Kool-Aid flavor. Why? Because I like it more. Sue me. 

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Cherry Darling recipe:

3 c cake flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup butter or margarine 

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup Kool-Aid mix (of the sugar variety, not the unsweetened little packs)

4 oz condensed milk
1 oz milk
3 eggs

3/4 cup vanilla yogurt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

Mix together flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder in medium bowl and set aside. In large bowl, cream butter until smooth, then add sugar and Kool-Aid. Add milk and condensed milk. Beat in one egg at a time. Add flour mixture 1/3 at a time. Mix in yogurt. Fill cups about 3/4 full and bake for 18-20 minutes. Makes about 16 cupcakes.

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For the frosting, I just added some cherry flavoring and a little coloring to the leftover vanilla frosting I made the other day.

I liked how these came out, even though some of the density was lost. They're not too overpowering, which I was afraid of because when it comes to flavoring, I tend to over do it, and these vaguely cherry cakes could have easily become cough syrup cakes. So there it is.