How to Make a Box of Chocolate Cupcakes for Valentine’s Day

What would you say is the most stereotypical Valentine’s day present to give?  Flowers?  Candy?  Jewellery?  CHOCOLATES?  According to my research on amazon, people even give perfume!  What a thoughtful gift . . . I love you but you could smell better.

Well, I thought that playing on the idea of giving chocolates as the most popular Valentine’s Day gift to give (not determined by any research!), I would make a box of chocolate CUPCAKES instead.   The cupcakes look like a box of regular holiday treats, but upon closer inspection, you realize they’re so much better and they’re in cupcake form!  By the way, if your “sweetheart” gives you candy, leave him.  You can get that stuff at the dollarstore.  I would know . . . it’s where I bought some of the ingredients for the Box of Chocolate Cupcakes I made.  Note to self:  don’t shop at the dollarstore and then tell people.  Oops.  

Do you think Valentine’s Day is overrated?  Commercialized to the point of nausea?   It seems as though the second that the Christmas decorations are put away, the stores are filling the shelves with pink and red Valentine paraphernalia.  I guess they all have to make their quota’s, or whatever it is stores do.  As do people on YouTube, which is why we have a Valentine’s day video going live in January.  Oops again. 

What is happening here?  I think they had me at “Cupid Corn”.  How I could I resist THAT!?!? 

How to Make a Box of Chocolate Cupcakes

Ingredients/Materials:
Regular and mini chocolate cupcakes
Chocolate buttercream
Assorted Valentine’s candies (conversation hearts, heart shaped jujubes, chocolate hearts etc)
Valentine sprinkles
Heart shaped tin (food safe)

**I purchased all of my candy from the Bulk Barn which is a Canadian store but you should be able to find themed candies anywhere during the Valentine season.
**I purchased the heart shaped tin from Dollarama which is also a Canadian store, but you will most likely be able to find a similar product at a dollar store near you.

Procedure
Bake your chocolate cupcakes and prepare your chocolate buttercream. Arrange the cupcakes in the heart shaped tin as best as you can. The tin that I had held three regular cupcakes and four mini cupcakes best. By placing the larger cupcakes at the tip, and the peaks of the heart, I was able to fill the rest of the heart in with the mini cupcakes. To decorate these cupcakes, pipe a thin layer of buttercream onto the top of the cupcake. You do not want to pipe too much buttercream, as you will still want to be able to put the lid on the tins, once the candies are on top of the cupcakes. Arrange candies as desired on the buttercream. Simple flower shapes look great, as do “X’s” and “O’s”.

Now go buy yourself some Cupid Corn and go and give someone a hug “O” and a kiss “X”.