On the outside it’s a normal cupcake, nothing much to talk about, but take a large bite and you’ll see a cute little heart staring back at you. Now that’s what I’d call ‘going that extra mile’ to make someone feel special. It would also come in handy if you’ve forgotten to buy a gift. It takes no more than an hour or two at most to put these together.
Addition of Rose extract up’s the Valentine’s Day dessert to a new high.
Ingredients:
112g of plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 pinch of salt
190g of granulated sugar
3 eggs
120g of plain yoghurt
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
105g of oil, flavourless (I used vegetable oil)
Red food colouring, or colour of your choice (I used poppy red gel colour paste)
1/4 tsp rose extract/ essence
Cream cheese frosting
280g of cream cheese
65g of icing sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
117g of whipping cream, or double cream
Method:
Preheat the oven to 175C/gas mark 4. Grease and line a 9 in square baking pan with baking paper. Also line a muffin tray with liners
Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl until well combined. Take another large mixing bowl and add the sugar, eggs, yoghurt and vanilla extract
Using a hand mixer or wire whisk beat the mix till pale and well combined. While still beating, slowly add the flour bit by bit, mixing well after each addition and making sure no traces of flour is seen after the final addition
Finally, pour in the oil and using a rubber spatula fold it into the batter. Don’t mix it too vigorously. This may take a few minutes
Transfer 3/4th cup of this batter into another bowl and cover the remaining batter with cling film
Into the smaller batch, add the food colouring and rose extract mix evenly, adding more colouring if necessary. Make sure the batter is evenly coloured
Pour this batter into the prepared baking tray and bake in the oven for 10 to 12 minutes, or till a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean
Transfer to a wire rack and after five minutes turn it onto the rack and leave to cool. The cake needs to be completely cooled to be able to cut, so I put it into the refrigerator for about 15 minutes to speed up the process
Using a heart shaped cutter (small enough to fit in a muffin hole) cut out around 8 to 9 hearts from the coloured cake. Keep aside
Pour around 1 tbsp of batter into each of the muffin holes and carefully place the cut out hearts into the centre of the batter, upright. It would help if all your hearts are facing the same direction. But to be on the safe side mark the muffin liners with a pen to know which direction the hearts face (so you’d get the shape intact when you cut into it)
Pour the remaining batter on top of the hearts slowly, so you don’t disturb them, until about 3/4th full. If they have moved a bit, using a skewer or toothpick just place them upright
Bake in the oven for 20 to 22 minutes or till the skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Transfer to a wire rack and cool completely before frosting
For the frosting, using the paddle attachment of a mixer beat the cream cheese and powdered sugar until just smooth. Don’t over do the beating or else the mix would become too loose and there’d be no way to fix it
Change to whisk attachment and pour in the vanilla extract and whipping cream. Whisk on high until stiff peaks form. Again if you overwhisk it, the mix would split and you need to start from scratch. So keep a close eye
Transfer into piping bags (I used a rose tip) and pipe away. You can use the remaining cake after cutting out the hearts for cake pops. You can use any cutter of choice in place of the heart and get a similar surprise! The cake can be easily doubled to make more cupcakes