How to Make Valentines Cupcakes

Today we're making a very special Valentine's Day treat. Zingy raspberry cupcakes topped with creamy, dreamy Swiss meringue buttercream roses. These are so easy to make, your mind will be blown. Also, they're delicious. Let's get started. First thing we're gonna do is make a raspberry reduction to flavor our buttercream, and if you desire, the cupcake itself. We need some lemon juice, but zest it first because that's gonna go into the batter. Just zest it over a plate or into a small bowl, and we'll use it up in five minutes or less. So nice, I love lemon zest in everything. I'm adding in the juice of half a lemon into a small saucepan. Just don't add those seeds in, nobody wants them. Okay, six ounces of raspberries, nice and washed. One tablespoon of granulated sugar, and we're gonna put this over a medium heat and then just muddle it to get all those raspberries broken up. The juice will congeal and form a really flavorful red syrup. So pretty. Muddle those berries up. After you've broken up your raspberries, you can kinda just let this hang out here for a few minutes, come back and stir every once in a while. You'll see it go into this nice red syrupy stage, at which point you're ready to strain it and set it aside. Raspberries are all broken up now. While my reduction is simmering and reducing, we can start our dry ingredients off. I'm adding in one and two thirds cups of all-purpose flour, that's about 213 grams, if you're measuring it out. To this, I'm gonna add a quarter teaspoon of salt, a generous quarter teaspoon of baking soda, a generous teaspoon of baking powder, one full cup of granulated sugar. Sift it out, give it a nice whisk so everything incorporates, set it aside, and let's check that reduction. It's looking nice and thick. Let's transfer that over and get that sieved out. All right, strain this. You don't wanna have all those raspberry seeds, but you could save the seeds for a smoothie or any snacking if you're so inclined. All right, now just use a spatula to press all that through because some of it is pretty gel-like, and I don't wanna waste any either. And you can see that right now we're left with just a delicious, very concentrated raspberry and lemon reduction. Pop this into the fridge, and by the time you're ready to use it, it'll be nice and chilled. For the wet mixture, in a medium bowl, I have three quarters of a cup, or 190 grams of unsalted, melted butter. No room temperature for us today. One half of a cup of sour cream. If you don't have sour cream, go ahead and use whole milk yogurt. And if you don't have that, buttermilk or even milk will do. Half a cup of whole milk. The zest of one lemon. And three room temperature egg whites. I'm using the whites because I want this to be a beautiful pink cupcake, and the yellow of the yolks will interfere with that. But if you don't care about the color, just take out a quarter cup of the sour cream and use the whole eggs. Very fresh eggs. Look at that, holding together. And three egg whites. Gonna add a tablespoon of vanilla in. Well, maybe a bit less, let's say. And the juice of half a lemon. Okay, let's give that a whisk. Okay, aside from getting on my apron, that's great. Let's talk about the reduction, though. If you wanna make this a raspberry cupcake, you have a couple of options. You could add in some raspberry halves, just break them in half, coat them in flour, and then add in maybe about a cup or so of them into the batter at the very end. You don't wanna break them up, they're very delicate. Or you could add that reduction in. But let me show you what happens when you add a raspberry reduction in. It's very interesting. These are cupcakes I made last night with this recipe, and I added in about three tablespoons of the raspberry reduction, maybe like two and a half. They were a beautiful pink color when we started off, but as you can see, it looks like I used taro root or something. I think it's actually a pretty lavender color. Very delicate, but it doesn't scream raspberry to me. When you take a bite, you're getting very faint notes. If I told you there was raspberry in there, you would say, oh, I taste the raspberry. But it's a beautiful lilac color, and for Valentine's Day, I want a nice pink color. So no raspberry reduction, yes to the lemon zest and juice. We'll be using our raspberry reduction for the buttercream. And a sole tiny little drop of soft pink food coloring to get that nice color that we want. If you don't wanna use that though, go ahead and omit it. It'll be like a pretty pale yellow color. These are good though. Add one drop of soft pink food coloring in, not deep pink or hot pink, it's soft pink. If you're using a stronger pink, just dip a toothpick in it and just rub a little bit into the wet mixture. A little bit goes a long way when it comes to pink. Okay, let's whisk it up. That's a beautiful soft pink, but I'm adding more because when it bakes, the pink lessens a bit. So two drops. There we go. That's a nice pink. Last step, dry mixture. Pour the wet mixture in and give it a whisk. You don't even have to use an electric hand beater or anything, super fast. Pour that in. Nope, matches my shirt, I just realized that. Wasn't on purpose. Just whisk to combine. Use a little bit of elbow grease. That beautiful batter is now ready to pop into our pans. I have cute little red liners and an ice cream scoop for an exact measurement. They're gonna bake at 350 for about 12 to 15 minutes. Keep a close eye on things. Cupcakes are all done. Now it's time for the buttercream. I'm making a batch of creamy, dreamy, and just beyond delicious Swiss meringue buttercream. If you wanna watch the full how-to with all my tips and tricks, click over here. Watch it, you'll become a Swiss buttercream fanatic, I promise you. But in the meantime, let me give you an abbreviated set of steps to make this amazing, new favorite, frosting. Separate five room temperature eggs. We'll add the five egg whites, one and a half cups of granulated sugar, that's 300 grams if you're counting, and one nice pinch of salt into a glass bowl. Transfer the bowl over to a pot of simmering water. The water can't touch the bowl, it's a steam heat. Whisk everything to combine, and then stir occasionally until it starts heating up. Once your mixture begins warming, whisk continuously until it reaches 160 degrees Fahrenheit, or grab a little bit between your fingers, you'll see that it's really warm and sticky and smooth. All that sugar has dissolved. Once you're at 160 Fahrenheit, transfer to a standing mixer, fitted with a whisk attachment, and begin whisking up, start low, move to high. You'll get nice, soft, silky peaks, and that mixer has to keep running until you are at room temperature. Once your mixture's at room temperature, you can add in two cups of unsalted butter, a tablespoon at a time, just drop in the first bit, mix until incorporated, and continue until all the butter is gone. Don't panic if it begins to get soupy, that's what should happen. It'll come together once all the butter's added, and you've mixed it up a little bit. Finish it off by adding a little bit of flavoring. For this one, instead of adding a teaspoon of vanilla, I added a teaspoon of orange blossom water, but use vanilla or skip it altogether because we will be using the raspberry reduction for flavor too. All done. So now, let's take a little bit of that buttercream, so smooth and creamy, just plop it into a bowl, and we're gonna be flavoring a bit of this and coloring a bit too. Maybe we'll save some and keep it white, maybe we'll have a gradient, I don't know yet. That's about like a cup and a half, maybe two cups. Let's take a tablespoon of our beautiful reduction, and just for a moment, can we appreciate the color? Look at that. This gives you a beautiful, natural pink with no food coloring, and we know I don't ever use food coloring. All right, let's take a tablespoon and whisk it in. Do you see this? I could blend, I could just like paint this on a sheet and like blend in completely. Beautiful, I love the little specks you're getting of the raspberry skins too. So natural and lovely. I have a piping bag fitted with a 125 tip that is a medium petal tip in case you don't know. I'm just gonna spoon in some of my beautiful, soft pink raspberry Swiss meringue buttercream. And I thought it'd be fun to try some nice roses. Now for the base of the cupcake, I like to just add a dollop and build a little bit of a mound. Now we can pipe a little spiral, and then begin piping some small, close petals. The petals get larger as you go out. These cupcakes are so easy to make, but when you bring them to a party or make them for someone special, people love them. You can really tell, there's a little bit of extra effort put into them. Okay, there we go. That's a cute and pretty, really easy, soft pink rose. Okay, there we go, another little rose. So you saw what they looked like purple. I really like them pink, I can't help myself. I feel like for Valentine's Day, you want it to be a special treat. This is a very moist cupcake. Can you see this? Look at it coming apart. That is melt in your mouth deliciousness. The Swiss buttercream is so perfectly sweet. For all of you who've ever had like American buttercream and you're like, oh, this buttercream is like just pure sugar, make a meringue-based buttercream like Swiss or Italian and your dreams will come true. You've got to make this. Okay, happy Valentine's Day in advance. I hope you get a chance to whip up a batch or I actually even hope even more that someone makes a batch for you. If you like my videos, hit that like button and subscribe and bon appetit.