Valentine's Day Raspberry Cream Cupcakes

I found this recipe on Your Homebased Mom and wanted to try them right away! She made hers with pretty pink chocolate hearts, but since I waited until February 13th to buy pink chocolate melts from the craft store, they were all sold out.  But I kind of like the contrast with the dark chocolate, and I loved the flavor it added.

What I Loved About This Recipe
Most of the time cupcakes are too sweet for me and a lot of frostings are way too sugary.  Instead of frosting, these are filled with a mash of fresh raspberries and whip cream which is light and fresh and not too sweet.
I also love that this starts with a boxed cake mix (yay for easy!) but it makes changes to it to make it way better than a box mix and gives it a from scratch taste.



(Unfortunately it was dark by the time I was done making these and the lighting in my apartment is REALLY bad, so the picture quality here isn't the greatest!)

Recipe

Raspberry Cream Cupcakes

1  white cake mix (I used Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe)
1 1/3 C water
3 large egg whites
2 TBSP unsalted butter, melted
2 tsp almond extract
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 (6-ounce) containers fresh raspberries, or one bag of frozen raspberries, thawed and drained
1 container frozen whipped cream.
Powdered sugar for dusting.

Makes between 18-20 cupcakes.  Line muffin tins with liners. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In your mixer beat the cake mix, water, egg whites, melted butter, and extracts in a large bowl for 2 minutes, or until the batter is well blended.  Place about 1/3 C of batter in each cupcake liner.  Should be about 2/3 full.

Bake the cupcakes until they are very pale golden on top, about 15 minutes. Cool the cupcakes completely.

Using a fork, coarsely mash 1 1/2 containers of raspberries in a medium bowl.  Fold the mashed raspberries into the whipped cream.  The mixture is fairly tart, if you want a sweeter more frosting like taste to it, add some powdered sugar to taste.  

Remove the muffin papers from the cupcakes and cut the tops off of each cupcake, about 1/2 inch down. Spoon the whipped cream mixture onto the cupcake bottoms. Place the cupcake tops on the cupcakes. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve with the remaining berries if using fresh.

For the chocolate hearts and xo's on top, I bought a small tub of chocolate melts, the kind you would use for fondue, or to make chocolate covered fruit. It can usually be found with the strawberries in the fruit section. I melted the chocolate per the directions on container and poured the melted chocolate in a ziplock bag with the tip of it cut off. This is a very easy replacement to those fancy pastry bags that I don't have! I squeezed the chocolate out onto a cookie sheet lined with wax paper in my various shapes and put the sheet in the fridge to cool.



When the cupcakes were cooled and assembled I added my chocolate pieces on top! I loved the taste of the chocolate with the raspberry filling! I had seen molds you can get at craft stores shaped like little hearts, but I like how imperfect mine are and how each is a little different and how they have that hand-drawn look to them!







Happy Valentine's Day!