A Fruit A Month: February is Pomegranate Month

Cooking events. Do you participate in any of them? A lot of the blogs that I troll participate in a few different ones. Because my main addiction is baking (cupcakes), I see a lot of Daring Bakers out there. While I love LOVE seeing the creations, reading about the baker’s experience, I’m not too hip on participating myself.

I do like the idea however of monthly food events and I’ve found lately that the one’s that appeal to me most are the ones that toss out a general challenge of one theme or ingredient and I’m free to decide exactly how I’m going to tackle it.

A Fruit A Month (AFAM) falls into that category. Give me a general direction and let’s see what we come up with. This month’s challenge is Pomegranate hosted by When my soup came alive.

I’ve been going crazy this month with my homemade pomegranate grenadine, using it in almost anything that’ll stand still. I’ve mentioned previously that Cupcake Project posted a homemade grenadine recipe and I used it several times.

To make this grenadine it’s so simple and you can use any 100% juice. Boil it down to 50% of the original content, for 16 oz of boiled down product add 2 cups of sugar and allow to cool. If you want an thicker syrup, boil down a tad bit more and add the same amount of sugar.

Delux Lemon-Raspberry Cupcakes with Pomegranate

For the cupcake:

I went really simple on this one. I used a lemon cake mix I purchased at William & Sonoma from a LA based company called Sprinkles. It’s pricey at $12 a box, but as a splurge it was fine. If you’re familiar with chiffon cakes, the lemon recipe mimics that type of cake. Which means it’s best to eat the cake the day you make it.

For the pomegranate filling:

I used the homemade grenadine and mixed it with powered sugar. You’ll want to make it thick enough that it slowly falls off the back of your spoon. I used the stuffing tip on my mechanical pastry bag and it worked smashingly.