LOVEinLIFE: What's Up Cupcake? Valentine's Day Style

One thing that you will learn about me {if you haven't figured it out yet} is that I love to bake. Not cook, bake - there's a huge difference between the two :) I think it's because baking requires you to pay attention and you {typically} follow a very structured recipe. I feel like cooking is too subjective, I mean "a pinch of salt" can mean two very different things to two different cooks. No thanks, I'll follow a recipe.

So we went to our very good friends' house today so Hubs could help J's Hubs put molding up in the baby's room {J is due in April - so excited!} and I thought I would whip up some cupcakes in honor of Valentine's Day. Plus I knew J would love having some scrumptious sweets around :) I used a basic vanilla cake mix, {yes, out of the box. Sorry, not gonna bake from scratch on a Sunday morning!}, mixed in some pink sprinkles and red food coloring and used store bought icing to decorate. Here's a sampling of the yumminess happening around my house today.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I tried 2 new techniques today. The first is white icing that I dipped in chocolate bark topped with peanut butter chips - it tastes like the hard shell on dairy queen ice cream. The icing stays really moist so it does actually taste like ice cream! Score! Super easy to do, just pile on a mound of icing, stick in the freezer to set {about 10 minutes) and then dip the top into the melted chocolate and top with the chips!

Beyond Amazing. Like totally. beyond. amazing.

The second one is on the right, you can't really tell in this picture but they are super shiny. All you do is pour the icing in a shallow bowl and place it in the microwave for about 10 seconds. Then dip the cupcake into the melted icing. It gives the icing a beautiful sheen.