THESE WERE EXCELLENT!!!!! My husband, who is not even a chocolate fan, devoured these. I prepared the boxed cake per the directions, but instead of 1/2 cup oil, i did 1 tablespoon and added 1/2 cup applesauce (SO MOIST!). I also added about a 1/2 cup strong coffee to my cake mix batter to enhance the chocolate flavor, or kahlua would be good i bet as well. Then when the cupcakes were finished, i made my own whipped cream and sprinkled tiny semi-sweet choc chips on top along with the cherry pie filling. Seriously, BETTER than bakery cupcakes! To die for when they are COLD and have settled in the fridge over night. Watch people's faces when they try these! I am also going to try a spice cake mix with the cream cheese filling and apple pie filling drizzled with caramel sauce! YUMMM!
Oh-so-yummy and impressive looking! I agree it's important to get your proportions right on these. I found that 1 1/2 tablespoons cake batter, followed by 1 1/2 teaspoons each of the cream cheese mix and cherry pie filling gave me the best size cupcakes. I got rave reviews on these - thank you!
These were great! I used the low fat choc. cake mix recipe and nofat cream cheese and whip topping and no sugar cherry pie filling. You couldn't tell these were low sugar and fat! They were wonderful and a huge hit!
Followed the direction to the T; one suggestion though, let it sit in the refrigerator overnight after baking- the coldness makes the cupcakes even more moist than it already is...was a great hit at the office holiday party...
I made this cake a few times in a Bundt pan instead...perfect!
I have made these twice and had good reviews at work and home. I followed most of the recipe but instead of using the the cool whip for icing I used premade cream cheese icing which i found stored nicely overnight. I also used an ice cream scoop to put the cake filling into the cupcake holders - worked like a charm. I filled it 3/4 of the way so the filling wasn't to far on the bottom to make it soft and wasn't to close to the top to make it pop off when you are trying to unwrap it to eat. Thanks for the recipe, it sure has became one of my favorites
These are so yummy! I found that putting 2 TBS of cake batter in initially is too much, I had some major overflow on the first batch. I cut back a little and ended up with perfect cupcakes. I didn't top with the coolwhip and cherries until they were ready to be eaten just to keep the whipped cream from getting that crusty stiffness. These are so tasty and a nice change from a regular old fashioned cupcake.
These are absolutely delicious (and i dont even like cherries!) they are definitely better cold the next day, so try to make these ahead. here's what i did to get the perfect cupcake: *use devils food cake mix and add 1/4C strong coffee * spoon 1.5T of batter into the bottoms *spoon in 0.5T cream cheese mixture and spread it out into a flat circle with your fingers as best as possible *spoon in 1-2 cherries making sure they are directly on top of the creamcheese *cover with 1T or so of cake mix ... by taking these measures, i ended up with cupcakes exactly like in the picture, and they weren't too messy to eat. i had a 21oz can of cherry pie filling and it was more than enough to fill and have enough to put on top of 27 cupcakes. i used store-bought whipped white frosting (didnt have time to make my own, but i want to try with 'sturdy whipped cream frosting' from this site next time) i topped w/ 1 cherry and some mini choc. chips... PERFECTION!
I thought these were great!! They are a bit timely to make but it is soooo worth it. I think you have to just be smart about your batter to cream cheese to cherry ratio in the cupcake so it doesn't overflow... I didn't have any overflow and mine ended up making about 30 cupcakes. I used a large cookie scoop to transfer the cake batter and it worked really well without making a giant mess. Also I made a cool whip/cream cheese mixture and used it for both the inside and for on top. I agree with the reviewer that said you probably need 2 cans of pie filling because I basically ran out towards the end... Oh & I used the low-fat cake recipes & reduced fat cream cheese & cool whip- you would never know!! Will definitely make again!!
I hate to be negative but I really didn't like this recipe. I found that the cream cheese flavor was too complicated and distracted from the usual cherry/chocolate/whip cream joy of a traditional blackforest cake. Also my cream cheese/cherry filling sank to the bottom of my cupcakes and became a sloppy mess at the bottom. I also didn't like the frosting...it was dense and had an overpowering cream cheese flavor. I actually like (love?) cream cheese but I felt that it didn't work well with the other flavors in this recipe.
