I can’t stop staring at these gorgeous Hocus Pocus Cupcakes. *all the heart eyes*
The sprinkles! The frosting! THE SPRINKLES AND THE FROSTING!!
Although The Hocus Pocus Magic Shop takes place around Halloween, these delicious confectioneries flavored with chocolate, cherries, and roses are like Valentine’s Day shoved into a cupcake.
Which is exactly what you want in a dessert modeled after a love potion.
You heard me: love potion. These are LOVE POTION CUPCAKES.
Food porn abounds in The Hocus Pocus Magic Shop, and author Abigail Drake gave me no shortage of recipe ideas as I sped through her delicious book.
However, as soon as I read about the love potion Grace stirs up, I knew my book-inspired recipe would also have to be love potion-inspired. Happily married woman that I am, I still love me a good man-catching treat, and the opportunity to make cupcakes based on a bewitching brew was too tempting to pass up.
The potion ingredients listed in Grace’s spellbook sound absolutely mouthwatering: honey, cherries, rose water, brandy wine, and (because this is a magic spell) water from sacred pool.
I fell in love (ha!) with the idea of all these flavors mixing together, and I decided to fold them (minus the brandy wine) into my Hocus Pocus Cupcakes.
Hocus Pocus Cupcakes are deliciously different from any other cupcake you’ve had before. While the chocolate cake base will be familiar, the rosy purple frosting is a little bit unexpected, a little bit wild, and completely intoxicating—exactly how love should be.
Chocolate and cherries is always a winning combo in my book, so I took some liberties with the potion recipe and threw chocolate cake into the mix. It’s a love potion, after all, and chocolate is one of the best aphrodisiacs. *wink*
I used my go-to chocolate cake recipe, which, hands down, makes THE best chocolate cake you’ve ever had in your life. I’m completely serious. And you all know I don’t even like chocolate that much.
Except for when it’s in this cake, which turns out the most perfect cake crumb you’ve ever encountered. It bakes up thick and fluffy, yet is still incredibly soft and moist. I mixed together a bit of regular cocoa powder and extra dark cocoa powder, so the result is a deep, layered chocolate flavor.
To pay homage to Grace’s love potion, I doctored up the recipe a bit so the cake’s infused with cherry juice. A light fruitiness subtly sweetens the cake, and there’s a hint of cerise in every rich, chocolatey bite.
However, the real star of these Hocus Pocus Cupcakes is the luscious, velvety frosting.
I creamed together softened butter and generous dollops of honey, then added splashes of tart cherry juice and just a soupçon of rose water. The result is an exotic blend of fruit and florals: each swirl of sugary goodness contains a hint of honey, sweetness from the cherry juice, and the delicate perfume of the rose water.
Remember that “water from a sacred pool” I mentioned earlier? Well, that’s the key ingredient to getting Grace’s love potion to work — and to creating its signature swirly, pearly, magically effervescent shade of purple.
Purple is my absolute favorite color, and since I was fresh out of enchanted water, I gleefully added a drop of violet food coloring to the fragrant frosting in order to evoke that love potion glow.
I usually let people have free reign when it come to decorating, but I hope I’m not being too harsh when I say that Hocus Pocus Cupcakes NEED to have sprinkles on them.
Lots of sprinkles. ABUNDANT SPRINKLES. How else are you going to get that magical, twinkly effect?
A few drops of the love potion in The Hocus Pocus Magic Shop were enough to make people fall head over heels in love. So, be careful who you give a Hocus Pocus Cupcake to — you might just end up with more of an admirer than you bargained for!
Nah, I’m just kidding. I brought in these cupcakes for a taste test to my co-workers, and they don’t look at me with any more professional fondness than usual. I think it’s safe to say that the only thing Hocus Pocus Cupcakes managed to do is bewitch them with how absolutely divine they taste!
Hocus Pocus Cupcakes
Ingredients
CAKE INGREDIENTS
- 2 cups tart cherry juice
- 1/2 cup Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder
- 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 2 1/4 cups granulated sugar
- 4 eggs, at room temperature
- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
FROSTING INGREDIENTS
- 1 cup unsalted butter, very very soft
- 6 tbsp honey
- 2 cups confectioner's sugar
- 1-2 drops rose water*
- 7 tbsp tart cherry juice
- 1/8 tsp purple food coloring**
- sprinkles for decorating
Instructions
PREP INSTRUCTIONS FOR CAKE
- Measure the cocoa powders into a medium-sized, heat-proof bowl or pitcher.
- Pour 2 cups cherry juice into a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, then gradually whisk the boiling cherry juice into the cocoa powder until smooth. Let mixture cool, stirring regularly. (You can leave it to cool on your counter, but you can also stick it in the freezer for 40-50 minutes.)
- In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
BAKING INSTRUCTIONS FOR CAKE
- Preheat oven to 350F and line 2-3 cupcake tins with cupcake liners. Set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, use a handmixer to cream together 1 cup of room temperature butter with the granulated sugar until thick and fluffy.
- Add the eggs to the batter, one at a time and beating well after each addition. Then, beat in the vanilla extract.
- Alternately add the flour mixture and the cooled cocoa/cherry juice mixture to the batter, beating well between each addition.
- Use a cookie scoop to scoop batter into cupcake tins, filling each cavity almost to the top. You should have enough batter for 24-28 cupcakes.
- Bake cupcakes at 350F for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centers of the cupcakes comes out clean.
- Remove cupcake tins from oven to a cooling rack. Let cupcakes cool in the tins for about 20 minutes, then turn them out onto a cooling rack to cool completely before frosting.
FROSTING INSTRUCTIONS
- In a large bowl fitted into a stand mixer (or, you can use a handmixer), cream together the softened 1 cup of very soft butter and the honey until smooth and homogenous.
- Add the confectioner's sugar and beat until well combined.
- Add the 7 tbsp cherry juice, the rose water to taste (see Recipe Notes below), and purple food coloring, and beat until everything is blended and a light, rosy purple.
- Pipe or spread frosting onto the cooled cupcakes, then sprinkle with sprinkles if desired.
Gorgeous photos! I am loving the colors in these.
Squeeee!! *jumps up and down* THANK YOU. I am seriously in love with the colors of these cupcakes. The icing turned out one of my fave shades of purple!! And it was fun channeling my inner Molly Yeh with the sprinkles, hahaha.
Chocolate and cherries are just divine 😊😊 I don’t have that sweet a tooth, but cherries have just that little bit of tartness to take away any sugary overload! Do you think a little dollop of brandy in the cake mix would spoil this? I do love cherry brandy at Christmas!
I think brandy (especially cherry brandy!) would be a wonderful addition to the chocolate cake! The original love potion “recipe” calls for brandy, but the only reason I didn’t include it is because we don’t drink alcohol, and I didn’t want to buy a bottle for just a drop or two. I definitely make some ingredient sacrifices for the sake of my recipes, but I draw the line at alcohol I won’t use, lol. But the stoutness of the chocolate cake should handle the brandy flavor nicely! Let me know how it tastes if you add it!
Ahaha, they are bewitching me with their sparkles, story, and ingredients. These cupcakes are unicorn beautiful. I always wanted to try to make something with rose water, but I fear it. Like you bring up in the notes, it can be a little strong, and I know that like banana, rose water can be overpowering. Cherry juice and chocolate sounds like the perfect combination. I’d definitely dump some cherry brandy in there (I LOVE boozed desserts way too much), but I see your comment above. Definitely not worth the expense if you don’t drink and won’t be using it again. Alcohol is not cheap, and it does go bad after a long time. These cupcakes remind me of Hocus Pocus, the movie. Probably because they played it 100 times leading up to Halloween. Love it! Velvety-frosting has me drooling.
Why, helloooo, Uncorked Asheville! Nice to see the new blog getting out and about. 😉 Thanks for all your kind comments about the cupcakes!Yeah, this was my first venture into rose water, too, and it was pretty good! I don’t think I could ever use more than just a little bit of it; it’s so strong! But over the years I have collected recipes that use rose water, and now I want to go back through them and make some because I have that ingredient on hand now! I’m excited. 🙂
Where are you purchasing these ingredients? Looking on amazon I’m finding one batch is very costly. Am I searching the wrong ingredients?
Hi there! I found the cherry juice in the organic aisle at my local Stop & Shop grocery store, and I got purple gel food coloring at Michael’s craft store. It only came in a small vial when all I needed was a little bit, but that stuff lasts forever! I can always use the rest of it another time (or, many other times!) The rose water was admittedly the hardest to find, and I finally got it from a specialty food store near me. It was with the extracts. Sometimes Home Goods will have it, though, or any store carrying Middle Eastern food products. I found the prices on Amazon to be a bit much, too, and ended up getting everything from stores.
Thanks for the information. Living in a rural area i have limited options for shopping. Maybe I’m due for a trip to the city. they just look and sound amazing. I hope to make these and enjoy. I enjoy your recipes and book reviews
Ah, yeah, I could see some things being hard to find in a more rural area. But you should be able to find everything in the city! And, be sure to ask your local mom and pop stores if they can order anything for you. Even though they dont stock it, it may be easy for them to order.
I tried this in 2 8″ round pans. The center sunk. Is it to heavy of a batter for anything other than cupcakes?
And my frosting was not setting up I had to add more powdered sugar. Any suggestions? The flavors were amazing. I want to try this again.
Hi there! I’m sorry you’re having troubles with the recipe, but I’m so glad to hear you like the flavors. The cupcake recipe is actually a tweaked version of a cake recipe I’ve made dozens of times, but I usually get 3 layers out of it — or, 2 layers, and some cupcakes. If you used only 2 pans, there just might be too much batter in each pan and the center isn’t cooking and setting up properly. I say give it a try again with 3 layers or the 2-layers-with-cupcakes-on-the-side, and see how it goes.
For the frosting — I find frostings can be tempermental in the summer; the humidity and heat can affect how much the butter spreads. Sometimes I need to add a little more sugar, too.
I hope you have better success the second time around!