Hidden Heart Cupcakes

Last post about Valentine's Day, I promise. My school has been out for a week because the rooms have been flooded, so I haven't been able to give gifts to my friends. We will return to school tomorrow, so I made some special cupcakes. The cupcakes have hearts hidden inside them.

Start by mixing up one batter of chocolate cake and one batter of strawberry cake (or any pink or red colored batter).

To bake these, bake a thin sheet cake of a pink or red batter, then use a cookie cutter to cut out heart shapes. If you don't have a heart shaped cookie cutter the right size, draw a heart on paper and trace it with a knife (that's what I did). Once you have your hearts, stand them up in a cupcake liner and spoon the chocolate batter in around them. It helps if you draw a line on the bottom of the cupcake liner before you place the heart inside, so that you know which way to cut the cupcake in half (if you slice it the wrong way, it will look like a rectangle, not a heart). Bake until a toothpick come out of the cake clean (but make sure you stick the toothpick in the chocolate cake batter, not in the center where the precooked heart is.

This is my favorite frosting recipe:
Vanilla Butter Cream Frosting

¾ cup butter room temp
¼ cup shortening
½ cup milk
½+ teaspoon vanilla
2 lbs. powdered sugar

Mix all the ingredients except for 1 lb of sugar. Blend well. Add remaining sugar and whip for 10 minutes for the best results. This makes enough frosting to ice and frost an entire cake. If you wish to make a small batch of frosting, be very careful with your measurements, and make sure you have extra ingredients, as the proportions are very sensitive.

Frost, slice, serve, smile.