Recipe: Cherry Almond Cupcakes

It's been a while since I've baked anything new (I tend to fall back on my old faithfuls, Chocolate Brownies and Crinkly Chocolate Cookies), so when the lovely people from Baking Mad got in touch to see if I'd like them to send me some goodies so I could have a go at making something from their website, I was super excited! Having had a good browse of the site, which has everything from chocolate cake to cheesecake and from cupcakes to breads, I decided I'd try the delicious-sounding Cherry Cupcakes.
I had to make a couple of substitutions as I couldn't find fresh cherries anywhere (not even the local greengrocer!), so I went with glacé cherries instead. I also swapped the suggested golden caster sugar for regular white caster sugar, skipped the cherry juice as I couldn't find any, and used some of the icing* I'd been sent rather than making the cream cheese buttercream frosting suggested.
Ingredients:
200g Unsalted butter (softened)
100g Golden caster sugar
75g Light muscovado sugar
1tsp Almond extract*
4 Eggs
175g Self-raising flour
50g Ground almonds
150g Glacé cherries
Makes 12 Cupcakes (Although I got 18..!?)
Start by creaming together the butter, sugars and almond extract*, until pale and fluffy. I used an electric mixer for this but you could probably manage it with a wooden spoon and a bit of elbow grease.

Beat in the eggs, one at a time, adding a spoonful of flour with each egg to prevent the mixture curdling. Fold in the flour, ground almonds and cherries, mixing until evenly dispersed.

Spoon into cupcake cases in a cupcake tray, and bake at 180°C for 20 minutes, or until golden and springy, and a skewer inserted into the cupcakes comes out clean (mine took more like 28 minutes). Allow to cool before icing, and top each cupcake with another cherry.

I used the Silver Spoon Chocolate Flavour Designer Icing* I'd been sent to ice my cupcakes; I liked that you got a choice of nozzles, and the icing tasted nice, the perfect combination with the almond and cherry! However, I found that although it piped nicely, it didn't set very well, and the swirls sort of melted fairly quickly. Also, there was enough in the tube for ten cupcakes, iced pretty sparingly as you can see below; I'd kind of hoped it would go a little bit further than that!
The cakes themselves were beautiful, just the right amount of almond which paired really well with the cherries, and they really didn't last very long given that both myself and my boyfriend are massive lovers of anything almond-flavoured. Have you ever made anything from the Baking Mad website? Do you like the look of these cupcakes? Will you be trying them? xo This month's Featured Blogger is the beautiful Sophie Jane! Also remember to check out the wonderful LaylaD Beauty.