Maraschino cherries are perserved, sweetened cherries that are dyed red and flavored with a little bit of almond. Sticky sweet, they aren't the most popular of fruits, but there are at least two things that they are perfect for: garnishing cocktails and topping off desserts. These Cherry Vanilla Cupcakes from Cupcake Bakeshop look perfect with their garnish, which seems much more appropriate for their flavor profile than sprinkles would be because it lets a potential cupcake eater (if, for example, these are out on a dessert table) know what kind of cupcake he or she should expect. They probably still won't expect to find cherry pie-like filling in the center of each vanilla cake, but it will help.
If you're interested in using little treat cups for your baking, as show in the picture above, take a look around a craft store, which is where I found mine. Don' fill them quite as high has you might fill regular cupcakes because they are more likely to overflow, but otherwise they should work our just the same as normal cupcake papers.
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