This old-fashioned cherry cupcake is just the thing for Valentine’s Day. I’ve updated a cake that my mother used to make for my sisters and me when we were children with all the flavors of a bourbon Old-Fashioned. The rosy pink color of the cake immediately brings to mind the Feast of Saint Valentine.
When I drink Old-Fashioneds, I seldom add cherries, but the cherries are essential to this cake. The cake is colored a beautiful rosy pink by the addition of maraschino cherry juice and a generous amount of chopped cherries that add texture, and moisture to the light white cake. The cake itself tastes like the best vanilla cake you have ever ate with a soft nod to the maraschino cherries. A fragrant orange-bourbon buttercream tops the cupcakes and completes the adult “Old-Fashioned” flavor.
I had remembered this cake fondly but sometimes the memory is better than the actual thing. Not so in the case of this cake. In fact, I made it twice recently while my mother and I visited my sister and her family. We couldn’t get enough of the cake and it is now my current favorite. After all, everything that is new was once old and vice versa. When making this cake for a mixed age crowd, you can make two versions of the boozy icing and eliminate the bourbon for the under 21 crowd. The orange buttercream brings a bright taste of sunshine to what can sometimes be dreary days in February, with or without the bourbon.
I never thought that this simple recipe would remind me of an important lesson. The day that I was baking the cupcakes for the photo, I ran into a legendary pastry chef. When I told him what I was making, he said “You cooks (as opposed to pastry chefs) have all the fun. Can you imagine what ‘they’ would say if I made a cake with maraschino cherries?” Because I love to make my food delicious and sometimes playful, it had never occurred to me that there might be ingredient boundaries for some cooks. I think that this is a good lesson for our holiday devoted to love: If you love it, and it makes you happy, don’t worry what other people think. These Old-Fashioned cupcakes make me very happy — and I think that they’ll do the same for you.