Chocolate Rum Cherry Cupcakes

My good friend Niki recently celebrated a birthday and requested a cake that only had three requirements - it had to be chocolate, it had to have cherries, and it had to have rum involved.  So after scouring the internet for recipes, none of which I was sold on, I decided to just create my own and wing it.  I used a secret family recipe for the chocolate cake (Granny Opal's Chocolate Cake), and the recipe calls for one cup of water in the batter.  I substituted 1/2 cup Captain Morgan's Private Reserve Rum and it didn't seem to affect the recipe at all, but instead added a nice spice to the background flavor.  These can be made into a cake or cupcakes and I decided to go the cupcake route. 

The icing is a family favorite, as well, and you can find it on the back of any Hershey's cocoa powder box.  :)  It is a very rich icing with a great consistency for cakes/cupcakes.  Finally, for the garnish, I took stem-on maraschino cherries in some of their liquid and soaked them in about 1.5 cups of rum for 24 hours.  The next day I drained and dried them off before dipping them in tempered melted chocolate (a combination of semi-sweet and milk chocolate).  After an hour or so, the chocolate was set and the cupcakes were assembled with the proverbial "cherry on top".