Last night I spent an hour just watching cupcake videos on YouTube. Then I came across CupcakesAndCardio‘s video on how to make heart-shaped cupcakes. On top of that, I knew I had a box of Betty Crocker’s SuperMoist White Cake Mix sitting in my cupboard for months now. I also knew I’ve been craving cupcakes for the last week. I don’t know why I thought it was some complicated thing to mold the batter into a heart shape without getting some special tin. These were super easy to make!
You can use cake mix or make some from scratch. Whenever I look for baking recipes, I usually go to the Joy of Baking! The batter also looks pretty pink here, but I should have used more food colouring, or bought a colouring gel. The cupcakes didn’t come out as vibrant as I hoped.
Bought a bag of milk chocolates that have cherry cream filling in the center. I put these in each of the cupcakes! I used some pink cupcake liners to stay with the pink heart theme I had going on.
To get the cupcakes to mold into a heart, all you have to do is roll up some tin foil (or use a glass marble) and place it like I did above. You won’t get a perfect heart, but they’ll still turn out well once you finish decorating.
When you’re pouring in the batter, make sure you don’t overfill each individual liner. Half-way is just enough, because once it rises, you don’t want it to overflow and ruin the shape! I had them in the oven at 350 F for 17 minutes. While they were baking, I worked on the frosting.
I used Betty Crocker’s Creamy Deluxe Vanilla frosting here and mixed in the food colouring. I scooped out the entire tin of frosting, but for one box of cake mix, I really only used half of the tin. Because my piping tool was cracked, I used a big Ziploc freezer bag. I snipped off a small corner and put through one of the tips from the pipe and taped it (from the outside) to keep it secure.
Don’t cover the entire cupcake top in icing – you just want to outline the shape of the heart, several times as you can tell, and then carefully blend the frosting together so it looks smoother. This way the icing is kind of contouring the cupcake and making it seem much more like a heart shape! Afterward, I just topped it off with some pink glittery sprinkles!
I made two batches of cupcakes, and with the first, I placed the chocolate in first. The second batch, I put the batter in first and then placed the chocolate inside. I found that the second batch worked out better like that, because the cupcake I ate in the first batch got all sticky on the bottom and it was quite sticky when peeling off the liner. The stickiness didn’t affect the taste though, it added the perfect hint of cherry flavouring to the cupcake!
These look delicious. :)