Heart in a cupcake re-do!

The weekend before Valentine's Day we were headed down south to my parent's house and I wanted to take my niece & nephew a little something. It was the perfect chance to get my heart in a cupcake fail corrected! This time, I took my time (and step by step pictures) and it worked! I also decided to use my newly learned rose piping skills on these cupcakes as well. Very happy with how they turned out!

After you mix the batter, separate 1/3 of it out, color it & bake in a square baking pan until just firm. Wait until the cake is fully cooled. You can stick it in the fridge or freezer to expedite this. After it is cooled, use a small cookie cutter of your choice to cut out the cake that will be the centers of your cupcakes. Since it's Valentine's Day, I of course chose pink hearts.

I tried to cut out as many hearts as possible.

 Here are all of my hearts ready to go into the cupcakes!

Place a dollop of batter in the bottom of each cupcake liner. Then place a heart in each, piping batter around the heart until the liner is 2/3 full.  

 IMPORTANT- make sure all your hearts are facing the same direction! And that you remember which direction that was!

Here's what they look like right out of the oven. I have no idea why the hearts floated to the top. I followed the tutorial & hers didn't seem to. Maybe my hearts are too thick or my dollop at the bottom was too much.

When icing- remember to keep all the cupcakes facing in the same direction as they were in the pan so you know which way the heart is facing! If you don't, see my last post & the blobs they will look like when you cut them!! All that hard work for nothing....

Anyway, I used the rose piping technique from the cake post on these cupcakes. Using a 1M tip, start in the middle & swirl around to the outside. Easy Peasy.

 I added some white sugar sprinkles and the shiny finishing glaze. Aren't they pretty!! :)

 This is the first one we cut in to for my grandmother. I did it!! There's a heart!! In hindsight, I probably should have done the icing a different color, maybe red. With the heart sticking out the top of the cupcake, the top of the heart gets a little bit lost in the icing. O well, at this point I'm just excited you can actually see a heart!

 And here's my niece Jolie with her cupcake. You can really see the heart in this one :)

And yes, she loved them! Spoiled girl, she thinks every time Aunt Kelly comes to see her cupcakes are coming as well. What can I say? If she asks, they probably always will!

And not to leave her little brother Cade out, I made my first ever blanket thanks to this Pinterest post.

 It has minky fabric on one side & a really cool kind of western print on the other. It was soo soft! My husband wants one for his recliner. I'm thinking it will have to be much bigger than the one I made for Cade!

Love him!!

And since it went over so well, I decided to make one to send to our cousin's month old little boy West.

All in all, Valentine's Day was a success!! Drew & I decided to do something different and had an at home date night for ours. It was almost a disaster due to my favorite Italian restaurant not doing take-out that night, but Carino's, cupcakes & my handsome husband saved the night!

Hope yours was good as well!