Chocolate and Maraschino Cherry Valentine's Day Cupcakes

By Christy

When you think of Valentine's Day you probably see visions of hot pink greeting cards, bouquets of flowers, colorful conversation heart candies, cupids, heart balloons,and lots of other things that show off Valentine's Day,  Some of these are a bit above and beyond in their mushiness. Not saying I'm complaining.... Women (such as myself) eat this stuff up! It's kind of fun to have a day when it's okay for people (cough cough- men) to be sentimental, romantic, and be a little cheesy.

So when I thought about what sweets I wanted to make my for my sweet, I wanted to make sure to put the same twist on it. I didn't want to make plain ole cookies, or a typical dessert..... I wanted to make something that said HAPPY VALENTINES DAY without actually having to write it out. haha

Knowing that my Valentine LOVES maraschino cherries and with the sweet set of V-day cookie cutters I scored on the dollar isle at Target, I decided to create these not only super cute but delicious VALENTINE'S Day cupcakes.

Ingredients:

1 prepared chocolate cake mix, made into cupcakes

Icing:

2 sticks butter (room temp)

4 cups of powdered sugar

4 tbsp maraschino cherry juice

1/2 cup finely chopped maraschino cherries

Prepare your cake mix according to the box. When putting the mix into your cupcake liners make sure to fill the liners up almost to the top (you want their to be a substantial muffin top because that is where you will want to cut the heart out from). Bake at 350 for directed time for cupcakes.

While the cupcakes are cooling, make the icing. Mix the butter sugar and juice until well blended. Then add the chopped cherries. If the icing is too runny, add more powdered sugar until it is the consistency you desire.

Now for the fun part, the assembly. Cut the muffin tops off of each cupcake. Ice each cupcake bottom with a healthy portion of icing. Next, using a SMALL heart shaped cookie cutter, center it on the muffin top, push down and gently remove the center heart from the top. (Use a little TLC in this portion). They will most likely break on the edge's, depending on how big your cutter is, but you wont be able to tell once you put it on the cupcake (as long as you didn't butcher the job too bad). I then sprinkled a little amount of powdered sugar on the tops, before adding them to the bottoms. Then place the muffin top back on the iced cupcake and gently push down to ensure they are attached.

This will leave you  a bunch of really cute little heart shaped cake cut outs. I simply just piped some icing on one and made a little heart sandwich out of the extras. No need to waste such deliciousness, right?!