For the 4th of July this year, I decided to take a completely different direction in cupcakes and go the junk-food route. I found 2 recipes for cupcakes using Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper, and I thought, how perfect for our truly American holiday.
The Dr. Pepper one was great. I used Marbello cherries, which are sour cherries packed in light syrup, which made it a little more of an adult dessert than a kids one. The frosting was really dark and gingery delicious, and held up well the next day. The recipe calls for using a half cherry on each cupcake, but a whole cherry tasted and looked much better.
The Mountain Dew one was good - surprisingly homemade-tasting since it called for a cake mix which I never use if I can avoid it. But the frosting was a problem. As written, the frosting would have made more of a glaze, which I do not like on cupcakes (misleading photo on the recipe page - grrr). So I had to fool around with it a bit and ended up adding the pineapple/coconut mixture to a buttercream, which made a tasty but runny buttercream. I'll work on it more and see if I can't get it just right.
It's hard to see in the photo, but the baking cups are electric yellow, like Mountain Dew. So in order to have a connection to the Mountain Dew bottle, I sprinkled green edible glitter on top.
All in all, two successful recipes that I would make again, and people really liked the fun, almost white-trash theme. I mean, what red-blooded American wouldn't?
