Happy Valentine's Day!

With Cupcake orders this weekend and requests from Emily's teacher... it was time to make some more super sweet love cupcakes!  This year, I made them with a twist!

I used Sutton Gourmet Paper liners in black and white and used a light pink cream and white pearls, and red, pink, white nonparrells.  If you haven't tried Sutton Gourmet Paper liners for your chocolate cupcakes yet, you MUST!  They hold their color, shape, texture with a dark cake unlike any grocery store liner ever will!!  Don't these look amazing?

The cupcakes are a chocolate cake, filled with cream topped with a dark chocolate ganache.  I used a slightly different cake recipe than before, but both are great recipes.

After the Love cupcakes were ready for the order, I wanted to mix things up a bit and decorate the rest a little different for Emily's class.  So, I printed some toppers, cut them and pasted onto sticks and made some buttercream (a new recipe - I'll post it at the bottom of this post!).

I love the idea of black and white with red/pink and I really love how these turned out!  They've got a shiney layer of ganache topped with buttercream.  Oh YUM!

Vanilla Buttercream
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, room temp
½ cup vegetable shortening (like Crisco)
2 lbs sifted (1 bag) powered sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
Scant ½ cup heavy whipping cream
dash of salt

1. Cream together butter and shortening.
2. A cup or so at a time, mix in the sifted sugar.  Scrape down the sides after each addition.  After the first addition, add the vanilla.  Add the cream after each next addition.  IMPORTANT:  You may not need all the cream, so add it SLOWLY.
3. Add the salt then beat on high for 3-4 minutes.