Cherry Cupcakes and Meringue Butter Cream Frosting Recipe

Makes 1 dozen cupcakes
Ingredients

2 large eggs, separated
½ cup softened butter
1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup milk
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
2 tablespoons maraschino cherry juice
¼ teaspoon almond extract

Pink and Purple Sparkling Sugar

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 F. degrees. Sift all dry ingredients into a medium bowl.
Separate the egg yolks and the egg whites. Set aside until needed.
In a large bowl cream the butter and sugar until creamy, about 2 minutes.
Add the egg yolks to the bowl one at a time and beat in.
Beat until all the yolk is fully incorporated with the sugar and butter, no streaks of yellow from the yolk, please.
Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together.
Mix the dry ingredients and milk into the egg, butter, and sugar mixture, alternately adding the flour and milk a little at a time.
The batter will be thick but will loosen up once you mix in the stiffly beaten egg whites in the next step.
In a separate bowl add the extract and cherry juice to the egg whites and beat until stiff peaks form.
Fold the egg whites into the batter with a wooden spoon or spatula. It takes a good bit of folding action to get the egg whites to fully incorporate.
Use an ice cream scoop to fill the cupcake liners or cupcake pan if not using liners about ¾ of the way full of batter.
Bake at 350 degrees for 18 to 20 minutes.
Once done baking remove the cupcakes from the oven and cool on a cooling rack for 10 minutes.
After 10 minutes remove the cupcakes from the cupcake pan and allow to cool completely on the cooling rack before frosting with Meringue Buttercream Frosting. Then remove them from the hot pan and allow to cool on a rack before frosting.
Makes 12 cupcakes

Cherry Cupcakes with Meringue Butter Cream Frosting Tips

Almond extract is much stronger than most other extracts and it only takes a small amount to flavor a cupcake batter.
If using another flavoring start out with ¼ tsp and make adjustments as needed
I used pretty pink and purple sparkling sugar from Wilton to decorate the frosting and give them an Easter feel. These would work great for a little girl's princess party don't you think?

Pretty Easter Cupcakes

My oven baked them perfectly at 18 minutes. I usually set my time a few minutes early and check them just to be sure. Oven temps vary and what might work fine for me may cause a cupcake disaster for you.
I'll be posting the recipe for the meringue buttercream frosting in another post.