Bake a heart inside of a cupcake

You've probably seen these around Pinterest. Cupcakes with hearts baked in the center. They are easier than they look. It involves baking pre-cut cake hearts in cake batter. Its a cake in a cake. Its cake-ception.

You'll need a cake recipe that would yield 2 8-inch layers (any recipe works fine, but the denser the better. I'll explain why later). This recipe yields 12 cupcakes with hearts baked in the center.

Start off by dividing 1/3 of the batter and dye it red. Set aside the other 2/3 for later use. Butter and flour a nine inch cake pan and pour the red batter in.



Your baking time may differ with recipe or ovens. I'd recommend baking it for 10 minutes and then checking it every couple of minutes until you can stick a toothpick in the center of the cake and it comes out clean.








Try not to squish them down. If you do, you won't have a nice pointed tip on your heart when the cupcake is cut open.

They should be facing the same direction so you'll know which direction to cut them in once they are done baking.

I wish I would have used a squeeze bottle for this part. It would have been easier to pour in the batter. The ice cream scoop was too large and cumbersome to evenly distribute the batter around the heart perfectly. If the batter isn't distributed evenly, the heart may not stand upright and will fall to the side resulting in a crooked heart when it is cut into.

This is a really important part and I didn't illustrate it, but you'll want to mark the front of the cupcake the heart faces so you'll remember to cut the cupcake in half the right angle.

You can see the mark on this cupcake.

Ta-da! This heart was placed off center but I'm fine with it! I used a really fluffy recipe using 4 eggs instead of the 2-3 most recipes call for. I wish I used a denser one because the fluffier the cupcake, the harder it is to cut into it without completely squishing it even when cutting really slowly with a finely serrated knife.