Cherry Rose Cake

I am so into baking right now. I just love every bit of it...the measuring, mixing, trying new things and having this beautiful creation at the end that everyone enjoys.

At work there is a group of us that goes out to lunch to celebrate birthdays. My boss had her birthday last week and was on vacation so the plan was that we would go out to lunch this past Monday. This is the first birthday lunch that we have had since my new obsession has really taken root. 

I called my friend from work and asked what she thought about me baking a cake to bring to lunch. She thought it was a good idea and that our boss would like it. I was SOO excited!

I spent last Thursday evening looking through the recipes that I have been collecting for cakes...looking for one that I couldn't wait to try and then I found Buttermilk Cupcakes with Cherry Icing...DING DING DING! Winner!!


This recipe is wonderful. The cake gets it's cherry flavor from chopped frozen cherries and it has a nice pinkish color (I am still not great at taking pictures of the whole process...I will get better). I made the cake as directed with no changes.

The icing was another story. It gets it's cherry flavor from cherry brandy (yum!). However, this is a work lunch and it feels wrong to pour liquor into this icing. I spent a long time thinking over what to use to replace it and decided on really good cherry preserves 4 TBS (I put them in the food processor and blended them well).

Remnant Cherry Preserves

So now I have this really beautiful pink icing. With little flecks of cherries in it.

Beautiful Pink Icing with Cherry Flakes!

I have a problem though...it tastes like cherry powdered sugar. I don't like too much of a powdered sugar taste to the icing. So I decide to throw in a bar of cream cheese and 2 tsp almond extract. Oh my, this is delicious. Next time I will split the butter in half and do half cream cheese and I will double the almond extract to bring out more of a cherry almond flavor (OH! and I will DEFINITELY be adding the cherry brandy with the cherry preserves).

What to do with the rest of the cherry preserves? I decided to put some in between the layers of cake...BUT it started running off the cake! I though I had really made a mistake I slapped on some icing and started trying to mix it up (next time I will mix it with icing first and then put it on). I had to put the other layer on it and it and use my icing bag to "caulk" it up!

I was really scared about this time.

I then decided to make the top look like one big rose!

A Single Rose

I really need a spinning cake decorating stand!

I HATE writing on cakes...I never get it right and so, I decided to play around with something else. I used white chocolate candy melts and used a squeeze bottle to make letters until they came out decently. I then just pressed them into the icing and I love the look that I got with this cake!

I really like the way it turned out!

It was a HUGE hit at work...everyone loved it!

I think that next time the bottom of the letters will get chocolate "stands."

This recipe is a KEEPER!!!