Cherry Vanilla Coca-Cola Cupcakes

The combination of cherry and vanilla is one of my favorite flavor combinations. Cherry combined with anything generally makes me happy. But cherry vanilla is a really perfect flavor. When Coca-Cola came out with cherry vanilla coke I was really excited to try it. More importantly, I was really excited to use it in a dessert. That was the inspiration for these Cherry Vanilla Coca-Cola Cupcakes.

This wasn't the first time I had put soda into baked goods. I first learned about putting coca-cola into a cake when I was a teenager. Which is when I first tried to make the famous Cracker Barrel Coca-Cola Cake. And I totally fell in love with how the cola flavor melded together with the chocolate flavor. I've made a lot of Coca-Cola cakes since then, and a few root beer cakes as well. But the Coca-Cola cake is almost always chocolate. With the flavor of the new Coca-Cola soda being cherry vanilla I thought that for this recipe I should make sure that the cake was a white cake, rather than chocolate.

I wasn't entirely sure how these cupcakes would turn out, especially since I don't think I have seen anyone make vanilla cupcakes with cola in them. Despite the fact that there is cola in both the cake and the frosting, these cupcakes aren't overly sweet. In fact I was shocked that they ended up being the perfect level of sweetness on my first try at making these. The cherry flavor ends up being really subtle, and the cupcakes are moist and yummy.

How to make Cherry Vanilla Coca-Cola Cupcakes

The cake part of these cupcakes is really simple. You basically just throw everything in a mixing bowl, mix it up, put it in a cupcake tin and bake it. The frosting is also simple, but it requires you to boil down the soda into a thicker more syrupy liquid before making the frosting. If you don't boil it down the flavor of the soda wont be concentrated enough to come out in the final product. Frost the cupcakes with the frosting, and then top with a maraschino cherry if desired. The cherry makes them look really pretty though!

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