On Saturday night we went to a Christmas party and gift exchange with some friends, and as it was a bring-and-share I made cupcakes for dessert.

In fact, ALL the guests took dessert!

The chocolate cupcakes are stuffed with chocolate ganache and topped with white vanilla butter icing and a little glitter, and the red velvet cupcakes are topped with white vanilla butter icing. All the cupcakes were decorated with fresh cherries that I had dipped in melted chocolate!

Altie ordered these for her birthday celebrations!

Anneke is going to be trying out this Dark Chocolate Cherry Fudge for me!

My hubby and son think its delicious, so I have had to hide Anneke’s box away from them until she fetches it.

This is another beta testing recipe that Nadia is going to test for me!

These are gluten-free cupcakes based on the very popular American virgin cocktail which is flavoured with lemon-lime soda and grenadine. They are baked with a gluten-free cake flour and they are so good!

The red base of this cupcake has some Maraschino cherry juice in it (and added red colouring), and then the icing has lemon juice and Maraschino cherry juice in it, making it a delightful pale pink. Then this delectable treat is garnished with a Maraschino cherry!

This is my entry for the Food24 Cupcake Competition!

I have found one or two shops that sell Cherry Coke and I LOVE the stuff! When I heard about the Food24 competition I went onto my Pinterest I Love Baking board to see what looked interesting and discovered this recipe!

They are divine!

For this recipe you will need two bowls, a small saucepan, a cupcake baking tray, and 12 paper cups.

For The Cupcakes
1½ cups flour
¾ cup white sugar
½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
1 large egg
½ cup buttermilk (room temperature)
2 tsp vanilla
½ cup unsalted butter
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
¾ cup Coca-Cola
¼ cup marachino cherry syrup
24 marachino cherries

For The Cola Icing
1 cup icing sugar
2 tablespoons Coca-Cola

Preheat the oven to 170°C.

In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt.

In the other bowl beat the egg, buttermilk, and vanilla.

In the saucepan, boil the Coca-Cola and cherry syrup gently for five minutes. Melt in the butter and the cocoa powder.

Pour the Coke and butter mixture into the dry ingredients, stir well with a wooden spoon, and then add the beaten liquid ingredients- beating until everything is blended.

Pour the batter into the cupcake cups till they’re ¾ full and drop a maraschino cherry into the center of each cup (you may have enough for more than 12 cupcakes).

Bake for 15 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.

When they’re completely cool, drizzle over the Coca-Cola icing and let them dry (note: I added a little brown gel food colouring coz the coke & icing sugar mixture was very pale).

Top them with a swirl of cherry butter icing and add another maraschino cherry!