Cupcake Experiment #4 (AKA the one that fails)...

Everyone has their comfort foods.  For me, one of my major comfort food is actually a drink (and doesn't include alcohol believe it or not).  The best thing you can ever give me is a Cherry Coke.  Now I must clarify here... when I say Cherry Coke, I do not mean the bottled or canned version (although the Wild Cherry Pepsi is decent), I mean fountain Cherry Coke where they mix cherry syrup into the Coke.

Yesterday I needed some comfort food so I decided to make Cherry Coke Float cupcakes from the blog Coco Bean.

Now look how awesome this picture looks (which is taken from their site)...

My finished version looks nothing like that.

First things first though.  The cupcakes themselves were really good.  They weren't overly sweet and were nice and moist.  If I made them again, I would probably leave out the cherry in the middle but, other than that, I loved the cupcakes themselves.

There's a coke glaze, basically a royal icing made with Coke instead of milk.  And I screwed it up by not measuring out my Coke and putting in too much, which then meant I had to dump in more sugar trying to get the consistency right.  I got it to where I thought it would work but it ran off the edges of the cupcakes and pooled in the bottom of each little cupcake well, which made them super messy to eat.

And, last but definitely not least, is the Cherry Buttercream.  The fact is that I'm not good with buttercream.  I always add too much liquid, which I did with this one.  And I also didn't beat it long enough after adding the liquid, which meant it started to separate a bit after just a few minutes of sitting around in my warm apartment.

Anyway, here is the recipe... I'm sure you'll have better luck with it than I did.

Cherry Coke Float Cupcakes
adapted from Nigella Lawson's 'How to be a Domestic Goddess'
makes 12 cupcakes

Cupcakes
1 1/2 Cups flour
3/4 Cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 large egg
1/2 Cup buttermilk
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup unsalted butter
3 Tbs cocoa powder
3/4 Cup Coca-Cola
1/4 cup marachino cherry syrup
24 marachino cherries

Cola Icing
1 cup Icing sugar
2 tbsp cola

Preheat the oven to 350 F.In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Beat the egg, buttermilk, and vanilla in a second bowl. In a saucepan, boil the Coca-Cola, and cherry syrup gently for five minutes. Melt in the butter and cocoa powder. Pour into the dry ingredients, stir well with a wooden spoon, and then add the liquid ingredients, beating until everything is blended. 
Pour into the cupcake pans and push a cherry into the center of each cupcake. Bake for 15 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean. 
When cool drizzle over the Cola Icing and let dry. Top with cherry buttercream and a cherry.