Valentine Cupcakes

On Thursday I attended the "We Inspire" Women's Entrepreneur Forum here in Enid and I was graciously invited to provide some dessert for the meeting.  I wanted to make something that is on our dessert menu so I chose to make a "seasonal cupcake", which is the dessert for Friday.  That means that each week on Fridays I will be baking some delicious cupcakes and decorating them to fit the season to serve to our guests.  I decorated these cupcakes I made on Thursday for Valentine's Day because it is my favorite holiday.

I made red velvet cupcakes first and mixed up the batter to pour in to the red and bright pink cupcake liners.

I put a Hershey Kiss in the center of each cupcake liner.  I had some white chocolate mint kisses left and used them up but also used some milk chocolate kisses for a sweet surprise in the middle of each cupcake.

I filled each liner about 3/4 full of batter.  You can see the tip of the chocolate kisses sticking out of the batter.  This was a good way for me to judge how much batter to put in each cup.

The cupcakes baked for about 15 minutes.  I try not to overcook them as this tends to dry them out.  When they came out of the oven they smelled so good!  I love red velvet cake!

I also made a batch of pink strawberry cupcakes.  After I mixed up the batter I realized that it wasn't pink enough for me.  It actually looked more like peach than pink.

I added some of this Wilton icing color to the batter to give it a brighter and prettier pink hue.

The batter was much prettier after adding the coloring and it was ready to pour in to the pink and white liners.

I used milk chocolate kisses in the center of each pink strawberry cupcake.  I love the taste of strawberry and chocolate together!  Which reminds me that we will be making chocolate-covered strawberries as part of an add-on package at the inn, so whenever someone purchases that add-on package to their room maybe I can make a few extra strawberries for James and myself!

You can see the tips of the chocolate kisses poking out of the batter.  This is a good guide to know how much to fill each cup.

These cupcakes baked for about 15 minutes and they smelled so sweet and delicious when they came out of the oven.  I really wanted to devour one right then but I hadn't had any breakfast yet and I didn't want to make myself sick.  Plus I was too excited because it was now time to DECORATE!!!

Now anyone who knows me knows that my absolute favorite thing to do is decorate . . . anything.  I am especially fond of decorating cupcakes and cookies and I have been collecting cupcake decorations for many years now.  I took an old cupcake pan that I had and painted it white and I use it as a holder for all of my sprinkles and decorations.  This makes it much easier when you are decorating a large quantity of cupcakes or cookies. 

I had a bowl of cream cheese frosting, a piping bag of cream cheese frosting, a piping bag of pink cherry frosting, candy hearts, an assortment of sprinkles, mini chocolate bars, conversation hearts, and artificial flowers I used to uniquely design each cupcake.

The night before I had hand-crafted 36 Valentine cupcake picks using printed Victorian images I cut out, embellished with beads, lace, ribbon, and other embellishments, and glued to flat toothpicks.  I also hand made some beautiful cupcake sleeves from lace paper doilies.

When I arrived at the meeting I set up the cupcakes on beautiful display stands and inserted the cupcake picks to reveal some of the most beautiful Valentine cupcakes I have ever made.

They were a big hit with the ladies and I got a lot of compliments.  They tasted delicious, but I am now regretting the chocolate kisses because they burned on the bottom and they made the cupcake difficult to eat.  It was also rather unpleasant to have a big chunk of hard chocolate in the middle of the cupcake so I am thinking I will not do that again but instead maybe fill the cupcakes with chocolate ganache.  Yummy!

There were other wonderful desserts at the meeting as well, including some wonderful lemon cookies made by Retha Wegmiller of Angel Delight Catering and Tea Room that were so moist, lemony, and delicious.  There were also some fantastic hand-made chocolates provided by Lisa Briscoe of Tres Sucre Chocolatiere.  All of the desserts were fabulous and I encourage you to visit these ladies sites using the links above!

I had a great time of networking, enjoying some delicious lunch provided by Retha Wegmilller, and I learned some very useful things about social media and marketing from Kelly Tompkins with Main Street Enid.  It was a great afternoon and I am so thankful I got to participate right here in Enid!

I am going to try to get better at creating regular blog posts so there is much more to come!  Please come back and check it out!  Until then . . .

May You Be Blessed!

Tammy