Be My Valentine: Red Velvet Heart Cupcakes

Red Velvet Heart Cupcake ready to be baked!

If you are looking for a fun Valentine’s cupcake I have one for you to check out.   I got this brilliant idea from Muses of Megret on how to make heart shaped cupcakes without buying a special pan!  By putting a small marble beside the cupcake liner it makes the cupcake form a heart shape while baking.  Love it! 🙂

When the girls walked into the kitchen after school last week the first comment I heard wasn’t “Mmmm….the house smells good!”  It was “Were you playing with our toys while we were at school?!”  The first thing they noticed was that their marble and maze toy drawer was sitting on the kitchen counter.  After a little more investigation they realized that I had just kidnapped the marbles for a little bit.  They thought it was a pretty cool idea and were willing to let the marbles finish baking with the cupcakes (and get re-washed because I dribbled batter on a couple of them) before playing with their marble mazes.

Red Velvet cake mix

I decided to make a Red Velvet cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting.  Red is a popular Valentine’s Day color and shows up beautifully in the cupcake liners.  Although I have made red velvet cake from scratch (with beets instead of food coloring) in the past I decided this time to use the Red Velvet cake mix I already had in the pantry.  The batter turned out nice bright red as expected.  Preheat the oven as directed on the cake mix or per your recipe.

Using a marble to make the cupcake turn into a heart shape

Put cupcake liners in 30 muffin tins.  Typically most cake mixes only make 24 cupcakes, however, this batch made more cupcakes with marble taking up a small portion of each cupcake plus I only filled the cupcake liners halfway with cake batter.

Heart shaped cupcakes with the help of a little marble

Once you have you cupcake liners in the pan place a small marble between the pan and the cupcake liner.  The liners should resemble a heart shape.

Pan full of red velvet hearts just waiting to be cooked

Add cake batter to each of the cupcake liners.  NOTE:  Be careful not to overfill the cupcake liners, if the cupcake expands over the edge of the liner you’ll lose your heart shape.  I filled mine cupcake liners half full and all of them turned out well.

Red velvet cupcakes cooling

Place in the oven and bake.  Since most cake mixes give you a range of time (27 to 32 minutes) I set the timer for the earliest time and checked them.  Mine were ready when the timer first went off.  Remove from oven and allow to cool.

Red Velvet Cupcake with Cream Cheese Frosting and red sprinkles

Frost cooled cupcakes with Cream Cheese frosting (I had some in the pantry that I used).  Spread the frosting in a heart shape pattern and add a few red sprinkles to dress it up a little bit more.

Red Velvet Heart Cupcakes

Enjoy your Red Velvet Heart Cupcakes!  The girls had a blast helping “sprinkle” the cupcakes.  It was fun taking the cupcakes to a couple events and enjoying the leftovers for school and work lunches.  These would be great for a Valentine’s Party at work, school or just for fun!