POM Wonderful cupcakes!

So a little while ago I won a coupon for a bottle of POM Wonderful from All Things Edible. Thanks, Jenny! I had thought it would be great in smoothies (I still think so - POM, a little vanilla frozen yogourt and blueberries, yum!), but I was inspired by her brownies to get a little more creative.

I headed to the POM Wonderful website and picked out the POM Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting. Chocolate is my weakness, this sounded perfect. I had picked up the Pomegranate-Cherry variation of POM (there are several different kinds!) and it seemed the perfect choice to go with chocolate.

The first thing I discovered when I opened the fridge was that my dear, handsome, smart and wonderful husband had guzzled down half the bottle of POM during one of his secret midnight fridge raids! Argh! And what do you bet he drank straight from the bottle?! Grr. So straight off the bat I had to halve the recipe. That's okay, though, because with only the two of us 24 cupcakes would be too much.

I bake a LOT, so the cupcakes were a breeze. They turned out perfectly - dark, rich and moist, with a slightly crispy top. I used my silicone baking cups rather than paper ones. They look pretty good, right? They are!

Okay, the icing. Now I am not the kind of baker who ices things. I kind of like my cupcakes plain and find icing too sweet. But I had the recipe right there so I decided to go for it. Not being an icer in general, I had practically no knowledge base for icing. Now I think I know a little better. I followed the directions to the letter (carefully halving all of the ingredients) and ended up with liquid icing. Delicious liquid icing, but liquid all the same. I tried adding more icing sugar. I tried adding more butter. I should have just divided the batch by a third and added more icing sugar, but I was invested in it by then and didn't want to! I added a good 2 cups more icing sugar (on top of the original 1 1/4 cups) and about 1/4 cup more butter. I still ended up with icing the consistency of un-set pudding - now with little lumps.

Finally I gave up and simply dipped the cupcakes in it. It is runny but will harden to more of a glaze. Unfortunately, it's not pretty - there are lumps of butter and sugar. Kind of disappointing. The taste, however, is fabulous, so I think I may be forgiven.

Next time I would leave out all the liquid in the icing recipe (the water and the milk) except the POM. I would beat the butter, sugar, melted chocolate and vanilla together, and slowly add in the juice rather than follow the recipe. Also I would make about a quarter as much - I ended up freezing a bagful of leftover lumpy icing, maybe it will work as a cake filling or in sandwich cookies.

Overall, they taste fantastic so I can't complain too much. I wish they looked better - I simply ran out of patience with the icing. I probably should have abandoned the batch and started over but like I said, I got invested.

And I'm still a little peeved that DH drank all that POM. I will have to pick up a bottle and hide it just for me! Relabel it 'PMS medicine' or something so he doesn't drink it! lol.