How to Make Heart-Shaped Cupcakes

Valentine’s day is about a month away. Whether you want to make heart-shaped cupcakes for your child’s classroom or to take to the office to share with your co-workers, they are the perfect Valentine’s day treat to whip up. My favorite part about these cute heart-shaped cupcakes, they don’t require a special pan or cookie cutters.

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How to Make Heart-Shaped Cupcakes

To make these cute heart-shaped cupcakes, you will need the following items:

  • Valentine’s Day Cupcake Liners
  • Muffin Tin
  • Christmas Red Wilton Gel Based Food Coloring
  •  Glass Marbles
  • Box Cake Mix
  • 2 Sticks of Unsalted Butter
  • Powdered Sugar
  • Clear Vanilla Flavoring
  • Valentine’s Day Sprinkles
  • Wilton Pastry Bag
  • Wilton Decorating Tips (aff link)

How to Make Homemade Buttercream Icing for Heart-Shaped Cupcakes

Making homemade buttercream icing is super easy and tastes delicious compared to the icing that you buy at the grocery store. A few weeks ago when I was doing a trial run on these cupcakes, I ran out of icing and pulled out a tub of white icing that I had in the pantry. After a side by side comparison, I will never buy a tub of icing ever again. The homemade buttercream won hands down. Let’s get started!

Homemade Buttercream Recipe

How to Make Homemade Buttercream Icing

How to Make Homemade Buttercream Icing
5 from 7 votes
Prep Time 20 minutes
Total Time 20 minutes
Course Dessert
Cuisine American

Ingredients
  

  • 1 cup Butter Don’t Use Margarine
  • 3 to 4 cups Powder Sugar
  • 2 tsp Clear Vanilla
  • Wilton Christmas Red Gel Food Coloring

Instructions
 

  • Allow the butter to soften to room temperature. 
  • Place butter into a mixing bowl. Use a mixer set on medium to beat it until the butter is light and fluffy. You want the butter to look smooth and fluffy.
  • Add clear vanilla and a small amount of Wilton Christmas red gel food coloring.
  • Slowly mix in approximately 2.5 cups of powdered sugar and use your mixer on low speed until the ingredients come together. Don’t increase the speed of your mixer until the powder sugar is mixed in well. If not you will have powdered sugar all over the place.
  • Taste test the icing to determine if you need to add more powdered sugar. Once the ingredients have come together, slowly add in remaining powder sugar and beat using medium-high with your mixer.
  • If your icing is still too thin, add a small amount of powdered sugar and continue mixing. Is your icing too thick? Slowly add in a tsp of milk until you get the desired consistency. 
  • Chill your buttercream icing in the refrigerator until you are ready to use.
Keyword homemade buttercream icing, how to make buttercream icing, how to make homemade buttercream icing

Use this guide to help you determine the proper consistency for your specific recipe.

How to Make Heart-Shaped Cupcakes

How to Make Heart-Shaped Cupcakes

I used a box of cake mix to make these cute heart-shaped cupcakes. Follow the directions on the box. Place cupcake liners in your muffin tin. Then place 1 glass marble on the outside of your muffin tin to create the heart-shaped cupcakes. It is very important that you only fill each cupcake liner about halfway full. Overfilling the cupcake liners with cake mix will result in the cupcakes losing their heart-shape. Some of ours were overfilled but we were able to pinch off a small bit to fix the shape.

I used a 1/4 measuring cup to fill the cupcake liners. Then place the cupcakes in the oven and bake them for 15 to 17 minutes.

Remove the cupcakes and marbles using a spoon. Be careful the marbles are very hot and can burn you. Allow the cupcakes to cool before piping icing on them.

Place the plastic coupler into the bottom of the pipping bag. Spoon the buttercream icing into the piping bag and then cut the tip of the bag once it is full. Then add your tip and start piping the icing onto these easy heart-shaped cupcakes.

These cupcakes were my very first ones to create and we used a variety of the Wilton tips to make our cupcakes. I tried not to stress if they didn’t look perfect and focused on making different designs with several different tips. So even if you are a beginner, these heart-shaped cupcakes are super easy to decorate.

My daughter made the cupcake that looked like a teddy bear. I wish that I paid closer attention to the tip that she used and how she made the design.

How to Make Heart-Shaped Cupcakes

If you don’t currently have any Wilton tips, you can also use a knife to spread the buttercream icing. Garnish with sprinkles and enjoy!

Have fun playing with the different types of Wilton tips to decorate your cupcakes. I’ve only been making my own icing since May of last year because my youngest wanted a cake that I couldn’t buy at the store for his birthday. And for Christmas, I asked for a mixer and more Wilton icing tips so that I could make my creations easier.

How to Make Heart-Shaped Cupcakes

Have you ever made heart-shaped cupcakes for Valentine’s day?

16 thoughts on “How to Make Heart-Shaped Cupcakes”

  1. 5 stars
    Heart shaped cupcakes! Perfect for Valentines day, even for a wedding anniversary! I will try my best to follow your recipe and surprise my husband with this.

    Reply

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