Remember how I wrote yesterday that I was behind in getting cupcakes churned out? Well, I finished 2 dozen cupcakes and baked the rest into a 3 layer cake. I didn’t love the recipe as I made it, but here’s where I got my inspiration: Kitchen Tested Red Vine Licorice Cupcakes.
Of course, I didn’t do it much the same. ๐ I used two butter recipe chocolate cake mixes and boiled down some coke (like 2 cans into 1 Cup) to use as part of the liquid. I also added 4 cherry fruit leathers to the coke and about 1/4 C grenadine for the cherry flavor – I don’t have cherry coke here. The rest of the liquid followed the instructions: eggs, butter, and coke instead of water until it was the right amount.
The cake was fine. Just a moist regular chocolate cake, and you couldn’t taste the cola or cherry. ;( And I stopped pouring right after this picture because I realized I wanted my coke flat – I didn’t want to mess with the rising of the cake. So I heated the coke until flat (which is what the recipe says…I just didn’t pay attention to why that part was there).
Then I made the filling as recommended in the recipe.
Mine burned to the bottom very easily, so I switched pots once and kept on stirring. It’s yummy, but very sweet, almost like a red vine pudding.
Then I made more coke syrup, added a cup of butter, 1/4 C grenadine, and 3 lbs of powdered sugar to make a cherry cola frosting. The original recipe has a licorice flavored frosting, but I HATE anise. A lot. And actually, my kids don’t like black licorice either. So there! Whip until it’s a good consistency.
For the cupcakes, I used an apple corer to cut out the center, scooped in a little filling, then swirled the frosting on top and topped it off with a red vine “straw.”
For the layered cake, I stacked three layers with the red vine filling between and frosted it.
I decorated the cake with pieces of red vines, including these chopped up pieces. If you look, the red vines look like Jewish (6 pointed) stars! That might be fun to do something with sometime…
Here’s the finished cake. It’s not leaning like it seems to be in the photo. Must be the angle.
Here, have a cupcake. ๐And there you go. Lots of fun, and good ideas, but the cola cake was a disappointment – a good chocolate cake, to be sure, but nothing remotely cola-y about it. The frosting was good, and the filling (once I pulled the non-burned stuff out) was good.
It was still a huge hit at the party. ๐
3 comments
The cake looks amazing!!! Such a fun idea to turn the cupcakes into a Licorice Cake! I just wanted to explain that the soda isn’t supposed to taste like anything. It adds richness and fluffiness to the cupcakes though. You could probably use regular coke for this recipe also. Also, when you change the recipe (which is always fine and I encourage it!), things will taste different. Thanks for using my recipe and for sharing the link to the original!
Author
Hi Melinda-
I knew that the coke wasn’t meant to taste like much in the cake, but I boiled it down to make a syrup and maybe add some kind of cola flavor. I’ve seen a couple of cola cake recipes with cola extract, but I didn’t have it. So I tried, but it wasn’t successful.
The filling was like red vine pudding, though. My dh asked if he could have the leftovers! ๐
That looks amazing!