Valentine's Day Cupcakes

These Valentine's Day cupcakes were a fun surprise for my twins when they bit into them and saw the marbled pink colors. These Tri-color cupcakes were so pretty and easy to make. You can use this marbling technique to tailor it to any holiday or occasion by changing the colors. We used white box cake mix to bring out the colors. On the box it says it makes 24 cupcakes but we ended up with 20 filling each 2/3 full as instructed.

Ingredients

• 1 box White Cake Mix or prepare your favorite recipe. You will want a white batter for best results.
• Red Food Dye. We like Wilton's gel based colors. The little tubs of colors last a long time and are very vibrant. Often just a toothpick will give enough color for your project. Their larger set has black which a very difficult color to make by blending colors.
• Use our Buttercream Frosting recipe or your choice of frosting. Here is our favorite Buttercream Recipe that we use.

Materials

• Large Bowl
• Piping bags and tips are the easiest to control the pouring of the batter.. If this is not available, I have used ziploc freezer bags.
• Cupcake Pan(s) and Valentines Cupcake printed or solid color liners.
• Scissors
• Sprinkles if desired

Steps

• Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
• Line Cupcake pan with liners. We chose white and red for Valentines Day.
• Prepare your cake mix as directed on box or your prepare your favorite recipe.
• Fill cupcake liners 1/3 full with white batter, set aside.
• Stir 3-4 drops of red food coloring into the remaining bowl of batter to make the batter pink. This will be your lighter pink so keep this in mind when adding the drops of food coloring. Mix well by hand.
• Pour about a 1/3 of this light pink batter into a piping bag with a 1A tip or fill a quart sized freezer bag in one corner and set aside. You will snip a small opening at the corner just before use.
• Mix more food coloring into the remaining 1/3 bowl of batter to make a darker shade of pink. Add a couple drops at a time and mix well until you get the color you desire.
• Pour this dark pink/red batter into a second piping bag or use the zip lock method.

• Snip a very, very tiny corner of the darker color and squeeze about two tablespoons into the center of each cupcake liner containing the white batter.
• Snip a tiny corner of the lighter pink color and squeeze about one tablespoon into the center of the darker color in each cupcake liner. See photo. You can reverse the order if you prefer.
• Bake in the preheated oven as directed according to your oven settings. Check with a toothpick or skewer inserting into the center of a cupcake. It is done when the toothpick or skewer comes out clean.
• Cool completely before frosting and adding sprinkles.

Tips for Our Valentine's Day Cupcakes

• If you are using Ziploc bags instead of piping bags, the freezer ones are firmer and much easier to fill and control the flow of the batter. Keep the batter in one corner of your Ziploc. Place in large cup or narrow dish while you are preparing the second Ziploc.
• Cut a very, very tiny corner of the zip lock just before using or it will pour too fast and make a mess!
• I gave the ziploc bag a small squeeze while putting the just the tip of the zip lock into the batter in the liner. Watch the level of the batter in the liner. When finished, you want the liner to be only about 2/3 full. It looked like it was going to layer the colors but it sunk nicely into the cupcake as it baked.
• I chose to pour the darker color first, but you could reverse the order of the lighter and darker batter.
• For the frosting, to achieve the look of the cupcakes in the first photo, you will need to use a piping bag with a 1M tip. We have a page that we will upload shortly to demonstrate how this look is created. Almost any type of sprinkles will be pretty on white frosting.
• This was a really cute Valentines cupcake, but you can use this technique for any holiday or occasion by simply changing the colors such as green for St. Patrick's Day.
• A rainbow colored cupcake would be another fun variation, just separate bowls of white batter and add food coloring to each bowl. Since it has a variety of colors, just drop a tablespoon of each until the cupcake liner is 3/4 full.
• You can make the cupcake a day ahead and for best results, frost on the day of the party.