Cherry Cola Cupcakes

Cherry coke is easily my favourite fizzy drink, I discovered it when I moved back here after living in Norway for four years when I was 12, it was bought my accident thinking it was regular coke and I was sold. Since then I my love for cola has seriously increased, not that I drink it every day or even every week, but I love cola flavoured things, especially the sweets Cola Bottles (it is also my favourite alcoholic drink at Wetherspoon pubs!)

I never thought of baking with it until I saw Gizzi Erskine's Fizzy Lemon and Cola Pastry Tart and I knew it had to make it, I promise to get a better picture up soon it looks a bit pale in this one! I've been hunting for months for cola essence, (I finally got some from eBay) I wanted a stronger flavour than just adding actual coke, as essence had a more 'cola bottle' taste, do you know what I mean? I like the more candied flavour.

So I had a little think and thought it would be a fun idea to combine cherry and cola into a cupcake. I thought I was go classic for the cherry part and not overdo it, choosing to use glace cherries as you can't get a more candied flavour, I chose to put the cherries into the cake part and the cola into the icing so they're separate as I wasn't sure how they would taste when physically mixed together.

I think they came out really well, I used my disposable piping bags for the icing and used a nozzle I actually got in a set from...Poundland! Shocking I know but they were actually pretty good for £1! To give it that element of fizz I added some cola popping candy to the icing after piped.

Ingredients:

• 100g unsalted butter, softened
• 100g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 100g plain flour, sifted
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 pot glace cherries, diced

For the icing

• 175 icing sugar
• 75g unsalted butter, softened
• 1tsp cola essence
• cola popping candy

Makes 12 (I made double)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius (160 fan)
2. Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy
3. Add the eggs one at a time, adding flour and baking powder inbetween each egg until fully combined
4. Add the diced cherries and mix until evenly distributed
5. Mix some nice cases, I chose red to give it the Coca Cola theme
6. Spread mixture between the cases and bake in the oven for about 15 minutes until golden and a skewer comes out clean
7. When cool mix together the butter and icing sugar, if you don't have an enclosed fancy mixer you may want to add the icing sugar gradually so you don't cover yourself in it!
8. Add the cola essence to taste
9. Cut the piping bag to size to fit the nozzle, fill it up with the buttercream icing and pipe on big swirls of icing
10. Sprinkle on popping candy
11. Eat! Nom!

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