I Heart Cupcakes

At first glance you may think that these are fairly standard cupcakes... move along please, nothing to see here! But wait...underneath that unassuming exterior lies a secret...a hidden heart!
To make the cakes, the cake mixture was prepared and then a small amount put in a seperate bowl and coloured with red food colour. This was then baked in a 8x8 tin and when cooled, the hearts were cut out. Then a little of the original mixture was put in each cupcake case, a heart was placed in the centre of each and then covered over with the remaining mixture. The whole thing is then baked together.

The only important thing to remember is when the cakes come out of the oven it is important to keep them all facing forward on the cooling rack as otherwise when you cut through the cakes, if the heart is not aligned, you will not get the desired effect. I put the cute 'Eat Me' toppers in when iced to show which way was forward.

The idea for these cupcakes originally came from Cupcake Takes The Cake. If you'd like to try them you can check out a video tutorial on the site.

It would be quite easy to adapt this idea to include different shapes and colours inside your cakes. You could even try writing a message... I had a go at 'I Love U' as you can see...I may need to play around with this a bit but it didn't turn out too bad.

You may also be thinking it's a little bit early for Valentine's Day, these are however my entry to Cakeboule's Virtual Valentines bake and craft competition 2012. So if you want to join in, why not hop over to Cakeboule's blog. The closing date is 4th February and you can enter both crafts and bakes.