Chronicles of Baking: Spumoni - Not just an icecream served at Italian restaurants

I'll start out by saying, "I love good Spumoni ice cream". Something about the cherry, chocolate, and pistachio is amazeballs. I tried to figure out how to best turn this lovely treat into a cupcake. I will have to make more attempts because this is not it but it was still tasty.

Side note: Spumoni will forever remind me of my first job here...

Credit

We had a flavor called "Fantasia" it was pistachio, cherry, and banana. Tasted weird, lots of people would want to order it. I would warn them they should probably try it first. If they disagreed and did not taste test first, 99% of the time they returned and asked for vanilla. Come on! I told you you wouldn't like it! I remember the last barrel of this stuff, hanging out in the back of house we all got spoons and ate the last melty bit until there was Fantasia no more.

I made the pistachio the cake part. I could not find unsalted pistachios so I used pistachio pudding to flavor the cake. Definitely not strong enough. I think next time I can rinse some pistachios and chop them up to use as decoration to add to the flavor or use chocolate cake with pistachio pudding filling....

I'm trying to remember but I think I mixed in chocolate chips for the "chocolate" portion of the Spumoni.

Next was the cherry, while at the grocery store and making up the recipe on the fly, I asked the hubs "is there some type of cherry flavoring?" To which he said, "I don't think so." So I bought some maraschino cherries and used the juice to add to the buttercream frosting. I also peeled the skin off of about a dozen of the cherries to cut up and add to the frosting to try and get that cherry zing. This did not work. I do not recommend it at all, it was a lot of work and not a lot of flavor.

Fast forward to the next day when discussing said cupcakes with the hubs...
Me: I wonder what I can use next time to make the cherry flavor better?
Hubs: Oh you mean like grenadine, the stuff they use in Shirley Temples?
Me: Where were you with this idea yesterday when we were at the grocery store?!
Hubs: I was rushed and not thinking clearly. I didn't know that was what you meant when you asked about cherry flavoring.

So, we have the not so Spumoni Cupcakes. They look pretty but will have to be revamped for next time...