Valentine’s Day Cupcakes

posted by Nancy on January 27, 2021 (updated 3/24/21) // 1 Comment

Our Valentine’s Day Cupcakes are so easy to make – you’ll just need cupcakes, food coloring, and our delicious Buttercream frosting to make this pretty Valentine’s Day treat.

Close up of five Valentine's Day Cupcakes sitting on a white table surrounded by red heart sprinkles.

Here is a Two Sisters tip … cupcakes are a great way to show someone how much you love them! And these Chocolate Valentine’s Day Cupcakes hit all three of the main criteria for holiday treats … they are pretty, delicious, and super easy to make. Topped with a beautiful and colorful swirl of our creamy and delicious Best Buttercream Frosting, anyone you give one of these cupcakes to will instantly know how you feel about them!

Ingredients You Will Need

How to Make the Cupcakes

Close up of 10 chocolate cupcakes sitting on a white table in front of a cupcake pan and a whisk.

Step 1: Make a batch of cupcakes. You can use a cake box mix, we have all the instructions you’ll need to make them taste just like homemade right here. Or you can make them from scratch with our yummy Homemade Chocolate Cupcakes recipe. We used chocolate cupcakes but Vanilla Cupcakes would taste great too.

How to Make the Frosting

Close up on a glass bowl filled with Buttercream Frosting and an offset spatula with two sticks of butter in the background.

Step 2: The key to these delicious cupcakes is our Best Buttercream Frosting recipe. It is light and creamy and buttery and super delicious! You will find the recipe and directions here. One batch of frosting will be enough to frost 12 cupcakes. If you used a boxed cake mix, you should have about 18 cupcakes and will need to double the frosting recipe. Once you have the frosting made, split it into thirds. Because the three layers of the frosting swirl are not all the same size we portioned our single batch of frosting as follows:

Red: 1 cup
Dark Pink: 3/4 cups
White: 1/2 cup

How to Color the Frosting

Collage image showing the food coloring formulas for making Red, Pink and White frosting.

Now it is time to tint the frosting. We like the Wilton Color Right Food Coloring. It is concentrated and you can get a bright color without having to use too much food coloring. Here are the formulas we used for our Valentine’s DAy red and pink frosting colors:

Red: 6 drops of Red food coloring and 3 drops of Crimson food coloring.
Dark Pink: 2 drops of Pink food coloring and 2 drops of Red food coloring.
White: No food coloring.

Putting It All Together

Close up of a chocolate cupcake with a red cupcake liner sitting in front of a cupcake pan full of cupcakes and three frosting decorating bags.

Step 4: Load the three colors of frosting into separate decorating bags with a Wilton 1M Open Star Decorating Tip and gather up your cupcakes!

Collage image showing the steps required to make a pretty three color frosting swirl using Red, Pink and White Buttercream Frosting.

Step 5: For each cupcake, you will make three swirls of the frosting. Red on the bottom, then dark pink, and finally white.
Step 6: With the decorating bag and the 1M tip, make one and a half circles of red frosting around the edge of the cupcake.
Step 7: Next apply another 1 1/2 circles of dark pink frosting but this circle should be a little smaller than the red frosting layer as shown in the picture above.
Step 8: Finally, with the white frosting, add a third circle but this time finishing with an upward flourish so that the swirl ends in a peak at the top.

You can watch a video of how to make a frosting swirl like this in our How to Frost Cupcakes post.

Expert Tips and FAQS

How far ahead of a party can you make these cupcakes?

Ideally, you should make the cupcakes the day before the party. You can store them in the refrigerator but remember to take them out a couple of hours before you are going to serve them because a cold cupcake is not a good cupcake. If you are short on time, you could make the cupcakes further ahead and freeze them until the day before the party and then defrost them and frost them the day before the party.

Do the cupcakes have to be refrigerated?

No. They will be fine left out at room temperature. Day one and two, they will taste great. On day three, the frosting will start to be hard on the outside and the cupcakes will start to get a little bit stale but they will still taste fine. After day four … the cupcakes will be stale. You can get another day or two out of them by storing them in the refrigerator.

Close up of a Valentine's Day Cupcake with Red, Pink and White Buttercream Frosting.

Other Valentine’s Day Desserts You Will Love

Valentine’s Day Popcorn

Valentine’s Day Marshmallow Pops

Hugs and Kisses Rice Krispie Treats

Valentine’s Day Marshmallow Wands

Did you Make This Recipe? Leave a review below, then snap a picture and tag @twosisterscrafting on Instagram so we can see it!
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