There are two different techniques I used to fill these cupcakes; with a cupcake corer and with a pastry injector tip. You can get either of these at your local craft or baking supply store or on Amazon.com (I found this corer at Target).
Filling with an injector tip
Injector tips work best for smooth jam or jelly that doesn’t have chunks of fruit it in. Using the injector tip and a gallon sized ziplock bag as a “pastry bag” simply poke the tip down into the cupcake (be careful not to go all the way through and poke a hole in the bottom of the paper liner) and squeeze slowing and gently until the filling starts to come back out of the top.
If you overfill the cupcake the top will start to crack apart, so be careful. It doesn’t matter if it is “pretty” because you will be covering it with frosting. 🙂
Filling with a cupcake corer
Cupcake corers are awesome and so easy to use. They are perfect for thicker, chunky filling link preserves with chunks of fruit that tend to get stuck in the injector tip.
See…piece of cake! You can save these cake centers and crumble them up to use as a topping on your cupcakes. This looks really nice on top of red-velvet cupcakes or black forest cupcakes filled with cherry pie filling. If you don’t need the crumbles for anything, then go ahead and eat em up! That is what I did. 🙂