The Cupcake Bakeshop was one of the first food blogs I read, back when I was just dipping my toe into the world of online recipes, writing and drool-worthy food photography. I've always been inspired by Cheryl's creative approach to baking and the ways in which she tried to re-imagine familiar tastes so that they translated to a single serving cake.

Last week, after a little over three years, more than 75 original cupcake recipes and the birth of her child, Cheryl is closing the Cupcake Bakeshop. The silver lining in this unfortunate storm cloud is that her recipes are still online and will continue to be available to serve as a inspiration resource to aspiring cupcake bakers everywhere.

There are some combinations of food that just taste good together. Cheese and crackers. Peanut butter and celery. Tuna salad and mashed potatoes. What? You mean not every family ate those two items together? It is actually quite delicious (and fun to mold). Another classic combination is donuts and coffee. Over at the Cupcake Bakeshop, Cheryl has reimagined that traditional pairing by turning it into a cupcake (topped by a small, homemade donut). She is one of those bloggers who's food photography makes me drool every so slightly each time she puts up a new post.

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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.

If you enjoy cupcakes and have not yet seen the Cupcake Bakeshop blog, I strongly recommend that you take a look. Cheryl is an amazing baker and comes up with some of the most exotic sounding and beautiful looking cupcakes you'll ever see. Case in point, the delightful cupcake pictured above is made up of a layer of cake, two layers of ice cream and topped off with frosting, making it into a Green Tea, Lavender and Honey Cupcake Bombe - and giving it a name that is as much a mouthful as the cupcake itself. The ice cream layers are lavender and honey, both homemade, and the frosting and cake base are both flavored with matcha (green tea powder), so the whole treat is colorful as well as tasty. As you might imagine, an ice cream cake (with very little actual cake) topped with frosting is quite sweet - but that's how cupcakes are supposed to be, right? Even if you don't want to attempt the whole process of this multi-layered cake yourself, you might want to try one of the two ice cream recipes to add something different to your repertoire.