V-Day Treats: Surprise Sweetheart Cupcakes

To close off this year's Valentine recipes, I decided to share a recipe that's one of my all time personal favorites! What I love about it most is that the cupcakes look ordinary but once you cut through them, you'll find a little surprise inside! ;)

Ingredients: 

1 (18.25 ounce) package white cake mix
1 1/4 cups water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
3 egg whites
8 drops red food coloring
2 drops almond extract

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 350F (175C) degrees . Line a standard muffin tin with paper cupcake liners.

2) Beat the cake mix, water, vegetable oil, and egg whites together on low speed for 30 seconds, then on medium for 2 minutes, until smooth. Fill cupcake liners 1/3 full with white batter; set aside.

3) Stir 4 drops of red food coloring into the remaining bowl of batter to make the batter pink, stir in almond extract. Pour 1/3 of pink batter into a resealable plastic bag/piping bag and set aside.

4) Mix more food coloring into the remaining bowl of pink batter until it is an orange/red color and pour the batter into a resealable plastic bag/piping bag. Stick the open tip into the center of each cup of white batter and squeeze in about two tablespoons of red batter.

5) Stick the open tip of the pink batter into the center of the red batter and squeeze about 1 tablespoon pink batter into each cup.

6) Bake the layered cupcakes in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 15 to 20 minutes. Cool completely before frosting.  Makes about 24 regular sized cupcakes.

*Recipe adapted from AllRecipes*

You can choose to frost them or just leave them the way they are! They actually remind me of a Sprinkles cupcake this way.

Fun fact: I took these pictures just a few minutes before I had to head to work so I was pretty much in such a rush and my only regret is that I wish I could've shown you guys how cute the center of the mini cupcakes are!

Nonetheless, I'm quite happy with the way they turned out! I get giddy every time I reach the center and see the pink and red colors! ^_^

If you try this out, please show me how they turn out! Link your pictures to my Twitter or Instagram (@mykiwiseed) or if you decided to make a blog post about it, feel free to leave your links in the comments below! I'll definitely check them out! 

I hope you all have a splendid time this Valentine's Day, no matter who or what you're spending it with! 

I love you all! Good luck.

Kisses,

S