We wanted to make "regular" cupcakes and frost them with frosting that was pink, and so my original idea was to add a few drops of food coloring to a simple vanilla frosting. However, I was struck with the idea that it could be fun to use some of the black currants we picked when we were at our house in Dalarna this summer. Not quite wanting to go to too much trouble (since this all had to take place quickly while 14 week-old Leiah slept) I realized we could try to add black currant jam instead.
It was a brilliant idea! (I must say... :) All that Yaminah and I did was skip the few tablespoons of liquids the frosting recipe called for, and instead, exchange a few heaping tablespoons of my homemade black currant jam. We experimented; the more we added, the darker lilac the frosting became. We settled on three tablespoons for this single-batch frosting. I absolutely loved using my own organic homemade jam, but if you do not have this, experiment and find something you like. I plan on mixing in blueberry jam later as well. Surprisingly, the jam did not affect the flavor much--just mainly the color.
I am sure this would work with any similar recipe, but the one that I used is from my lovely cookbook called "Hello cupcake!" by Leila Lindholm. (It's a great cupcake cookbook, but in Swedish). I made her "Classic cupcakes" (vanilla cupcakes with lemon) and then changed this frosting recipe. Here is the recipe, with my changes added:
Cream Cheese Frosting with Black Currant Jam
60 g softened margarine/butter
5 dl (a little more than 2 C) powdered sugar (I always just add more as needed)
1 tsp vanilla extract (or use 2 heaping tsp "vaniljsocker")
3 Tbsp. black currant jam
100 g Philadelphia cream cheese
Mix all of the ingredients with a mixer until very smooth. Then cool a while (I put the bowl in the fridge while cleaning up) and decorate cupcakes as desired.
