Blueberry Wine Cake

I made this dessert for a Memorial Day cookout with friends. It was refeshing, yummy and very easy to make. Since the glaze on the cake has wine in it that isn't cooked out, it is NOT a dessert for anyone under 21 years of age. At least not in the state of Indiana. I hope you enjoy this as much I do!

Ingredients:

1 box white cake mix
1 box (3 ounce) Berry Blue Jell-O mix
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup "good" blueberry wine
4 eggs
1/2 cup pecans


Glaze:

1/2 stick butter - room temperature (cold butter won't work)
1/2 cup blueberry wine
1/4 box of powdered sugar (1/4 pound by weight)

DIRECTIONS:

Grease and flour the bottom of a bundt pan or other pan. Line bottom of pan with 1/2 cup of pecans. Mix all ingredients for the cake mix and pour over top of pecans. Bake at 350 degree for 50-60 minutes for bundt pan. Once cake is done, poke holes in the cake witha toothpick or fork and pour glaze mixture over hot cake. I like to use a skewer to poke the holes...more of the glaze gets into the cake that way. Once the cake had cooled, I filled the middle opening of the bundt cake with fresh blueberries.

**Note: Make sure glaze mixture isn't too warm and runny - like if you heated the butter in the microwave. I did this because my butter was cold and the glaze ingredients weren't mixing together right. This made it too runny and the glaze was so liquified that it mostly ran off the cake instead of slowly melting into the holes.

You can make this cake with just about any flavor of wine that you like. Just use the appropriate flavor of Jell-O to match the flavor of your wine as close as possible. If you use strawberry wine, then use strawberry flavored Jell-O, blackberry wine, you would still use the berry blue Jell-O, etc.

Cherry Limeade Cupcakes

So I made these cherry limeade cupcakes as part of our Mother's Day celebration. First recipe I've tried for the cherry limeade cupcakes. They turned out very pretty but I need to find a way to get more cherry flavor into the finished product. These are limeade cupcakes with maraschino cherry icing. I love the way they look but perhaps if I switch the flavors of the cake & icing they will have more of a punch of cherry taste. Enjoy!

Cherry Limeade Cupcakes:

Makes about 24 cupcakes.

Ingredients:
3 cups cake flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp limeade concentrate
3 eggs
3/4 cup plain yogurt (you can use milk)

Directions:

Preheat over to 350 degrees.
Mix together the flour, salt, baking soda and pwder and set aside. In a medium sized bowl, cream the butter until smooth then add the sugar and cream together. Once the butter and sugar are creamed add in the limeade concentrate. Mix in one egg at a time. Add in flour mixture 1/3 at a time. When flour is thoroughly mixed, mix in the yogurt (or milk.) Batter will be slightly lumpy but should be smooth kind of like pancake batter. Divide the batter evenly into lined muffin tims and bake for about 15-20 minutes. Allow to cool.

Once the cupcakes have cooled, poke a few (5-ish) holes in the top of the cupcake, not quite to the bottom of the cake. Mix together the remainder of the limeade concentrate (about 3/4 cup.) Whisk the mixture well, so there aren't any lumps. Pour about a tablespoon of the syrup over the holes in the cupcake, slowly, so that the syrup absorbs into the cake. You can add more if you like, just go back over the cupcakes a second tiem if there is any syrup left.

For the icing I made a standard buttercream, but I used the maraschino cherry juice in place of the milk and vanilla extract. I added a little extra food colouring to the icing ot make it even more pink. Cupcakes are better when cold.