Hello again everyone, this is Part II of my posts for Emily's Surprise Bridal Shower, and there is yet one more to come! Luckily, this one will be relatively short, as it calls for a recipe I have already used and posted. As Cherry Chip- the kind out of the box- is the bride-to-be's favourite cake since childhood, we thought it only fitting to send people away with a Cherry Chip Cupcake favour as a thank you for attending the Bridal Shower. However these are not the box kind- I just can't bring myself to use box mixes now that I've started to make cakes from scratch. This Cherry Chip cake recipe is wonderfully light and fluffy, with lots of cherry flavour and chunks of maraschino cherries. You can find the recipe and directions in this post, although I used a different icing this time. What I would note is that even though I 1.5x'ed the recipe, I still only got 32 fairly small cupcakes, so I'd imagine that using the original amounts of the recipe would only produce 20-22 cupcakes if you were trying to make them a little bigger. They don't rise a significant amount, so you can fill the liners fairly full.
In my previous post where I made a full Cherry Chip cake, I paired it with a classic Vanilla Italian Meringue Buttercream. This I think is best suited with this cake, but as I was in more of a time crunch I decided to use a classic whipped American Buttercream.
For this you will need:
1 1/2 cups softened unsalted butter, or 3 sticks
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4-5 cups sifted powdered sugar
1-3 tablespoons buttermilk, depending on stiffness preference
Place the butter into a stand mixer bowl and using the whisk attachment beat butter until light and creamy, about 3-4 minutes. Add in the salt and vanilla, and mix until combined. Add the powdered sugar in 2 separate amounts, mixing until combined both times. Allow the icing to be beaten for an additional 4-5 minutes to help make it fluffy. Depending on how stiff the icing is at this point, add in enough buttermilk to thin it to the consistency you would like. I used about the full 3 tablespoons. If you don't have buttermilk, heavy or half-and-half cream works as well, but I find that the buttermilk helps to cut the sweetness down a little bit. Beat the icing again for another minute until thoroughly combined.
To make the icing look like roses is actually a fairly simple and quick technique. Line a piping bag with the icing, and use a 2D tip, which is a closed star. Position your hands and the bag at a 90 degree angle (so completely straight and upright) from the cupcake. Starting in the middle of the cupcake, squeeze the icing out and slowly pull up. When you have a small mound, start to circle the middle. I find going counter-clockwise is most natural for me, but either way works. Keep circling the cupcake until you reach the outside, and then slowly ease off the pressure and allow the icing to come to an end. To see it done, you can check out this youtube video here. I used Wilton Sugar Pearls on top to make it look like dew drops... slash just to make them look prettier!
Every cupcake was then put in individual boxes, tied with a ribbon and a thank you note was attached. I printed off the thank you template from the website How Does She, and used a brilliant circle cutter I recently purchased from Michaels, which made cutting all the circles out much quicker and neater!
Friggen cute, right?!
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