Valentine's is for cupcakes, and brownies part 2

I'm sorry to say that I'm not great at blogging on time, but we are baking every few days.  Since my last post, we've done five things that I'd love to show and tell you about...  Sorry.  I shall most likely post about them at some point rather soon, then back-date them so that the blog runs chronologically correctly.

So, to today's baking.  As mentioned earlier in the month, I had thought to offer cupcakes and brownies for Valentine's Day treats and had been lucky enough to secure a few orders for delivery locally.  I did some cupcakes for last Friday that were requested to be a mix of chocolate and vanilla icing on vanilla sponge

The little red hearts are soft jellies, ostensibly healthy treats for kids.  But I read somewhere that although they are made of nearly pure fruit, because of the high fruit content they are very high in sugar too.  Oops, not for the kids any longer!  And I learnt how to put a 'watermark' on the photos, cute huh?!  Here's a choc vanilla beauty, up close and personal

For today's orders, I chose white and red icing.  Though as you can see, the red wasn't red at all!  I added what I thought was quite a lot of paste - what do you guys use to make red buttercream?  This shade is called Christmas Red and is by Sugarflair...  And I've gone back using non-toxic food safe glitter as it has now been re-approved by our FSA.  One brand, EdAble Art, is fine and luckily most of my stock is that brand.  Phew!  With the other colours, I shall just use them to glitter sugarpaste removeable decorations, job done.

As for the brownies, I did them in a stack of 4 squares, dusted with vanilla scented icing sugar (a treat brought back to me by my good friend P from her native Sweden) and red glitter.  Wrapped in clear cellophane bags and tied with a red rubber band, Becca Bakes business card and sparkly red and gold heart ribbon.  As you do.  Mini-2 and I did the morning deliveries together, and we all did the evening ones (though the girls waited in the car while I ran to the front doors).

Valentine's is for cupcakes, and brownies

I couldn't help but notice that all the other bakers on Facebook were offering treats for Valentine's Day, and figured the old adage was apt, 'if you don't ask, you don't get'.  Coupled with the fact that I hadn't made chocolate cupcakes often enough to feel really confident about them, and we have... ta da!!  Chocolate cucpakes with chocolate buttercream icing.

For some reason, despite using the same size cake cases and the same ice-cream scoop to fill them, the cakes didn't bake as flat as the vanilla usually do.  I followed the recipe as I do for vanilla, and they still tasted soft, light and lovely, just had a little volcano in the middle.  Do you have any idea why that happened?

The chocolate buttercream wasn't as problematic, just light and delicious.  Mmmm....

I played around with the candy letters I used to make the X and O on the rear cupcake, and whaddya know - it spelled out my name!  haha

Here are some photos taken by my friend Jill over at Aspire2be. creative photography, great aren't they?!

I'm more confident with Vanilla, so that's the offer for Valentine's - along with Chocolate Brownies for those who prefer their treats dark and decadent.  What would you choose?