Hmmm....Any recipes out there? I found one that calls for mixing in Cherry Jam but I've never been a fan of the whole "add in jelly & call it buttercream" concept. It always turns out weird with little globs of jelly in it. Does anyone have any ideas? I'm pairing it with Toba Garrett's Chocolate Fudge cake (which is ammmazeballs! Super Dark, dense & fudgy)

If do decide to go the jam route, heat it up first until it's smooth. Leave it on the counter until it comes to room temp...it won't be clumpy jelly state. I use this all the time to make strawberry buttercream and I love it and it's shelf stable because the jam has been cooked.

You can mix pie filling with buttercream as well and that usually just stirs in but it adds a lot of liquid. Are you using this for just the filling or frosting too?

filling & frosting and then covering with MMF

I'm thinking if you add anything that has real fruit in it, it will be lumpy under the fondant. You could try puréeing the warm jam or pie filling but thing with reall cherries usually have skins so you would have to strain it before using it under fondant.

I'm not overly concerned with the itty bitt bumps - I'm actually thinking about frosting it in Black Cherry Buttercream & then doing a think layer of plain vanilla buttercream to smooth out the lumps. What do you think about adding some chopped, defrosted black cherries & the juice in my buttercream. Do you think it will curdle? (I just hate wasting ingredients)

I think it sounds yummy. I don't think it will curdle but you just want to substitute the cherry juice for some of the liquid so it's not too soft. I really love the tart cherries myself so that sounds better to me than pie filling.

I've got a bag of frozen cherries simmering away right now - I'm going to try and reduce to liquid but
keep the flavor. We shall see!

Definately let me know how it goes...I love chocolate and cherry anything

It was a hit! I did add a teeny, teeny, teeny smudge of lorann cherry to up the flavor but other than that I simply subbed the reduced cherry juice/cherries for the cream in my buttercream. I paired it with Tina Garrett's chocolate fudge cake. It's the twilight cake in my pics...

So glad it worked. I will definately try it.