Valentine's Cupcake Cake!

Is it a cake??

Is it cupcakes??

Could it be both? Yes, I know how you all feel about cupcake cakes… they’re messy, they look sloppy, icing falls between all the cupcakes, you can’t decorate them very well.

I’ve heard it all, I promise! But they are also so gosh darn convenient because it is SO easy to judge how many servings you have when you’re dealing with cupcakes and it’s so much nicer to “cut” and serve, especially when you’re dealing with kids. So, I set out to prove that cupcake cakes do not have to look terrible.

And because we’re approaching the looooovve holiday, why not do ours “in the shape of a heart”.

Here’s the trick my friends… don’t just bake cupcakes and then try to fit all these round pieces together into the shape you want. Find the shape you want in a pan and make your cupcakes fit that.

Since we’re going with a heart shape, I grabbed my heart pan, filled it with cupcake liners and put my batter right in there. The cupcakes will bake in the shape you need (which hardly ever is completely round)!

Just bake as the recipe tells you and once they’re all nice and golden (sugar is such a great browning agent!), you still have your individual cupcakes, but now they make a perfect heart shape!

Here’s my tip to all of you, and you would be very wise to listen: don’t just flip your cupcakes out all willy nilly. DO NOT DO IT!! Seriously, I rock at puzzles, and I could not get this darn thing back together. I may or may not have had to go back to my camera and fit the pieces back together by staring intently at the picture.

But by golly, I got it! You should take yours out one by one and place it in the correct spot. Then you will get it too, but much, much faster than I did!

Then it’s time to decorate! I spread some classic buttercream on mine and took it about 1/2″ from the edge. Then I dyed some a pretty shade of pink with my Americolor gel. I love this stuff! So much more vivid than other gel colors I’ve tried and you just need the teensiest bit. Then I used tip #32 to pipe a swirl border and a tip #5 to write my sweet message.

See!! It looks like a cake, doesn’t it? There’s no sagging icing. No gapes in your side. Nice sharp edges. Because we aren’t working with round cupcakes!!! We’re working with cupcakes that are already the shape we want! But, it still has all the pros of a regular cupcake cake and you can still just pull it apart and get to work eating.

Because that’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it?