Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cupcakes

A decadent, moist chocolate cupcake frosted with a luscious fresh strawberry buttercream and topped with a succulent chocolate covered strawberry! Perfect for Valentine's Day!

It only seemed appropriate to kick off February with these chocolate covered strawberry cupcakes! I am so excited for all things Valentine's Day! Give me all the pink, chocolate and sappy rom-coms! Is there anything more quintessentially Valentine's Day than chocolate covered strawberries? I knew that I wanted to take this Valentine's Day classic and turn it into a cupcake. The fresh strawberry buttercream is seriously delicious! The strawberry puree not only adds flavour to the buttercream but also turns it a beautiful soft pink colour. I went with my Classic Chocolate Cupcake recipe for the base - why mess with a good thing? And topped the cupcakes with their very own chocolate covered strawberry - can you tell I am huge fan of two desserts in one?Whether its your BFF, sweetheart or child, your valentine is sure to love these cupcakes!  

Tips for Achieving the Perfect Chocolate Covered Strawberries

• When melting your chocolate for your berries, I would recommend melting it in the microwave on medium heat for 20-30 second increments. Between each increment, remove the chocolate from the microwave and stir, repeat this until the chocolate is completely melted.

• It is important to make sure that your strawberries are completely dry and free of any water or excess moisture. If there are any water droplets on the berries it will cause the chocolate to seize up.

• Place your chocolate in a deep bowl or small cup to use when dipping your chocolate. Hold your berry by the stem and dip one side of the strawberry, followed by the other.

• Place your freshly dipped strawberry on wax paper to set up.

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cupcakes

with a fresh strawberry buttercream

Makes: 1 dozen cupcakes

Ingredients

For the cupcakes

1/4 c hot water 

1/4 c cocoa powder 

1/2 tsp instant coffee 

1 c flour 

1/2 tsp baking powder 

1/2 tsp baking soda 

1/2 tsp salt 

1/2 c butter, cut into cubes

1 c sugar 

2 eggs, at room temperature 

2 tsp vanilla 

1/2 c sour cream 

For the Frosting

1 c butter, at room temperature

3 c icing sugar 

1/2 c strawberry puree*

For the Chocolate Covered Strawberries

12 -15 Strawberries 

1 c semi sweet chocolate chips, melted

Directions

For the Cupcakes

Preheat oven to 350F. Line a cupcake pan with liners. In a small bowl, whisk together hot water, cocoa powder and instant coffee. In another medium bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. 

In a small sauce pan, over medium heat combine the butter and sugar. Stir occasionally, until the sugar is dissolved and the butter is melted. Remove from heat and pour into bowl of stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment. On medium, beat butter & sugar mixture until it begins to thicken and pales in colour (approx. 4-5 mins). You want to ensure the mixture has cooled slightly before adding your eggs. Add eggs one at a time, scrapping down the sides of the bowl after each addition. Add in vanilla and cocoa mixture. Mix until incorporated.  With the mixer on low speed, add half the flour, followed by the sour cream, ending with the rest of the flour mixture. Mix until just incorporated.

Divide batter evenly into prepared cupcake liners. Fill liners 1/2-2/3rds of the way full.  Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 5-10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

For the Frosting

In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, on medium speed beat the butter until light and fluffy. Beat in icing sugar until light and fluffy. Finally, beat in strawberry puree until just combined.

*To make the strawberry puree, blend fresh strawberries using either an immersion blender or regular blender until smooth. 

For the Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Dip strawberries in melted chocolate and let set on parchment paper

Assemble the cupcakes

Frost cupcakes as desired. Top with chocolate covered strawberry before serving. Assembled cupcakes keep for up to 3 days in the fridge but are best served fresh.

Valentine's Day Heart Sugar Cookies

“Simple and sweet, pink and white Valentine’s Day heart sugar cookies video decorating tutorial.”

I can't believe that Valentine's Day is just around the corner. It is hard to believe that we are already almost in mid February. This year is already flying by! Do you have plans for Valentine's Day? My boyfriend and I typically keep things pretty low key for Valentine's Day. In fact, we hardly ever celebrate it on the actual day. I love the idea of celebrating Valentine’s day with your girlfriends. It has been fun seeing all of the Galentine's Day parties that are popping up on Pinterest & Instagram. Perhaps next year I will plan a Galentine's day brunch for me and my girl friends. How cute would these cookies be on a dessert table?

I kept these sugar cookies fairly simple using a wet on wet icing technique. Which means that I flooded the cookies then immediately added more royal icing on top so it would blend into the flood icing and dry as an even layer. This allows you to swirl or drag the icing creating pretty designs on your cookie. Don’t be afraid to play around with it. Personally, I like the simple designs best with just a line or simple border of hearts. Decorating with royal icing can be frustrating at first, especially if you don’t have the right consistency of icing. It makes all the difference between an enjoyable decorating experience and a frustrating one.  Personally, if my cookies are going to be all one colour, I tend to use the same consistency of frosting for both outlining and filling/flooding my cookies. This means that I don’t have to mix up multiple batches of icing or fill multiple piping bags. I like to use a 10 second icing - when a knife is dragged through the frosting it should take 10 seconds for the line to disappear. This video is a great explanation.

Valentine's Day Heart Sugar Cookies

You'll Need: 

• Sugar Cookies
• 10 Second Royal Icing 
• Pink & Red Gel Colours* 
• Piping bags, couplers & Tips*
• Tooth picks 

* I used Wilton Red & Pink Gel Colours and Wilton Tips 2 & 3. 

Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Crowd pleasing moist red velvet cupcakes with rich and velvety cream cheese frosting

Red velvet cupcakes are a strange phenomenon. They aren’t quite chocolate but they aren’t vanilla either. That being said, there is just something about them that everyone loves. Red velvet is always a crowd pleaser! The combination of the moist cake paired with rich and creamy cream cheese frosting is hard to resist. These cupcakes are some of my most requested by friends and family. Whenever I am unsure of what to make and I ask for suggestions these are almost always near the top of the list (although these might start to edge out red velvet for most requested). Not only do they taste great but they are a beautiful looking cupcake. I love the deep rich red colour against the pale frosting. Of course like most cupcakes these are best topped with sprinkles. 

Red Velvet Cupcake

In my mind, a red velvet cupcake needs to be two things: 

1. Deep Red in Colour

2. Moist

This cupcake definitely hits the nail on the head. To achieve a deep red colour, I used a gel food colouring. I added small amounts of red gel until it reached my desired colour.  Keep in mind, I find that the batter tends to lose its colour as it bakes, so if you want a redder cupcake add more food colouring then you think you need. You can also use liquid food colouring but I find it takes a lot of liquid food colouring to achieve a deep red colour. 

You will notice that these cupcakes use mix of butter, oil and sour milk. This in addition to using cake flour instead of all purpose flour makes for a moist cupcakes. If you do not have cake flour on hand, for every 1 cup of all purpose flour remove 2 tablespoons and replace with 2 table spoons of corn starch. Make sure you sift well to insure the corn starch is evenly distributed. A lot of red velvet recipes call for buttermilk, since I rarely have buttermilk on hand I decided to use sour milk (milk with vinegar added and allowed to sit for 5 minutes or so).  The acidity in the sour milk, along with the additional vinegar in the batter reacts with the baking soda to allow the cupcake to rise. These cupcakes bake up with a lovely little dome. 

Cream Cheese Frosting

This frosting is everything! I think the real reason most people love red velvet cupcake is because of the cream cheese frosting. One of my best friends tells me it doesn’t matter what I make as long as it has my cream cheese frosting. Red velvet, carrot cake, lemon cake she doesn’t care. It’s all about the frosting. This cream cheese frosting is tangy and sweet. 

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Makes: 12 cupcakes

Ingredients

1.5 c cake flour

2 tbsp coco powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 c butter

3/4 c sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1/3 c canola oil

1 tsp vinegar

red food colouring

1/2 c sour milk (1/2 c milk + 2 tsp vinegar)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350. Line cupcake pan with liners, set aside.

In a medium bowl sift together dry ingredients: flour, coco powder and baking soda. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, on medium speed, beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. To the butter and sugar add egg and vanilla. Beat until combined. On low speed, beat in oil, vinegar and food colouring until combined. Add half of the dry ingredient mixture to the wet ingredients alternating with the sour milk until all has been combined.

Evenly divide batter between cupcake liners. Fill each 2/3s full. Bake for 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Transfer cupcakes to a wire rack and let cool completely before frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients

1/2 c butter, room temperature

8oz cream cheese, room temperature

4 c icing sugar

2 tsp vanilla

1-2 tbsp heavy whipping cream (optional)

Directions

In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, on medium speed, beat together butter and cream cheese until light and fluffy (3-5 minutes).

Reduce speed to low and add in icing sugar one cup at a time. Mix until combined. Add in vanilla. Whip frosting on medium - high speed until light, fluffy and pale in colour. If you would prefer a thinner frosting, add in whipping cream until desired consistency is reached. Frost cupcakes as desired.