Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes

These cupcakes are luscious & moist & when you hit a cherry spot its beautiful. You could just as easily use any other flavoured jam to completely change the flavour, I think orange (marmalade) would be perfect too as cherry/choc & orange/choc are two of my favourite combinations, plum would be another great flavour to try. I didn’t find any natural coloured cherries so had to go with bright & fantastic red which didn’t pose a problem for me, I love bright colours. The recipe comes form Nigella’s Domestic Goddess.

Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes

125g soft unsalted butter
100g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
300g morello cherry jam
150g caster sugar
pinch of salt
2 large eggs, beaten
150g self raising flour

Icing
100g dark chocolate
100ml double cream
112 natural coloured glace cherries

Preheat the oven to 180c & line a 12 hole muffin tin with cases.

Put the butter in a heavy bottomed pan on the heat to melt. When nearly melted, stir in the chocolate. Leave for a moment to begin softening, then take the pan off the heat & stir with a wooden spoon until the butter & chocolate are smooth & melted. Now add the cherry jam, sugar, salt & eggs. Stir & when all amalgamated, stir in the flour. Pour into muffin papers & bake for 25 minutes. Cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes before turning out.

When the cupcakes are completely cool, break the chocolate for the icing into little pieces & add them to the cream in a saucepan. Bring to the boil, remove from heat & then whisk until thick & smooth. Ice the cupcakes, smoothing with the back of a spoon & top with a cherry in the middle.

Makes 12