Cheery Cherry Cupcakes

When it comes to cake flavors, I'm always looking to try new things.  One of the things I like is to take an established flavor profile from something that does the flavor artificially and make it using real ingredients.  So today I experimented with making my own version of "cherry chip" cake mix.  Cherry chip cake mix has a slightly almond flavored white cake base with little red bits of artificial cherry flavor mixed in - sort of like the "blueberries" in a lot of blueberry muffin mixes.  Ew.  I didn't want to just use maraschino cherries, because that flavor can be powerfully strong in a not-good way.  So, I turned to cherry pie filling.  I drained the cherries out of some cherry pie filling, rinsed and dried them, and then cut them into little bits.  Then I stirred these into my favorite white cake recipe and baked it up!  For the frosting, I used some of the cherry gel that I had drained off to flavor my Swiss meringue buttercream cherry.  For fun, I added one maraschino cherry to the top.  These are so pink and cheerful!  I baked some cupcakes and a single 9-inch layer, to see how both would perform.  They came out wonderfully moist and soft, with great cherry flavor, but definitely not artificial!  Test successful!