Name: Strawberry Cupcake Filling
Ingredients: 16 oz frozen sliced strawberries; 1/3 C sugar; 3 TBS cornstarch; 1 tsp lemon juice

This is my annual public service announcement folks: “Don’t forget, Valentines day is only 12 days away!”

Are you looking for a sweet homemade treat you can make for Valentines Day? Something that looks great, but really isn’t that hard to do? Try my Strawberry Filled Cupcakes!

I promise you–these are something even a novice can make and have look great! I’m sharing them on behalf of Walmart, who asked me to bake up something special for Valentines Day!

Now, with all the great baking supplies at your local Walmart it isn’t hard to look like a super star. When I stopped by my favorite store (in Vestal NY!) there was a large section right up front dedicated to the holiday. And fully HALF of an aisle was for baking:

Cupcake liners and picks. Theme candies. Valentines Sprinkles of all kinds and colors. Frosting. Edible spray color. Adorable packaging ideas. It was so much fun to browse through the aisle and pick something out. Plus the prices were great. Less than $2 for many of the sprinkles and cupcake liner/decorative pick combos.

I thought it was fun that besides the classic pink/red/white color combos they also had some rainbow, and several sets in red/gold/beige that were really attractive and a bit less girly (see it in the photo above in the 150 packs of cupcake liners). They also had several items that were more for the, uh, I guess you’d say “anti-Valentines/Alternative” crowd–like the decorating candies that were black hearts with a bite taken out of them that say “Love really bites” 🙂

I went traditional with pink, red and white for the most part.

To start out with I used a box of Yellow Cake Mix to make cupcakes. It’s only after I put them in the oven that I realized I had forgotten to use the adorable liners I purchased and had used the silver foils ones I had picked up at Walmart several weeks ago. The cupcakes will need to be baked and completely cooled before moving on to the next step. I let mine cool overnight. Meanwhile I put together the delicious strawberry filling (the recipe is at the bottom of the page) and then stored it in the refrigerator.

Now you have cupcakes and you have filling. The only thing you are missing is the icing! I whipped up some of my my favorite homemade icing recipe. It’s made with just a few simple ingredients and it pipes out nicely.

For equipment you will need some disposable decorating bags, the really large star tip (known as the 1M tip–that’s what makes those great swirls!) and the long pointy Bismark tip to add your filling to the cupcakes (also known as the no 230 tip). While you can buy the 1M tip alone Walmart had this great “extra large tip set” that had 3 tips for less than the price of buying the 1M alone.

First cut the tip off a decorator bag and place your Bismark tip inside. Then fill the bag with strawberry filling. Use one hand to hold the bag up, and grab the tip with the other hand–then push the tip down into the center of your cupcake. Squirt some filling in. It too me a couple of cupcakes to really gauge how much I could squeeze in without having it all volcano out the top from overfilling. Don’t worry–the icing will cover up any overflow.

Once they are all filled you simply make a 1M swirl of icing on top of your cupcake, and then stick on a decorator candy or pick. Don’t let the swirl psych you out–it really is a simple technique that just looks hard. Gotta love that kind of thing! My post on “Easy Elegant and Professional Cupcake Decorating” shows the whole process:

Note: the strawberry filling needs to be refrigerated, which means these cupcakes need to be kept in the refrigerator until it is time to serve them.

When you’ve made delicious treats, of course you want to share them. This adorable cupcake box was the perfect way for me to share my treats with my father. I think the little heart shaped window that lets you see inside is so fun!

A tip for storing your icing. This stuff does dry hard, so you can’t just stick the tube in the fridge. I dampened a piece of paper towel and slipped it over the tip. Then I put the entire thing in a clear bag (these are the Great Value twist tie bags–less than $3 for 100). It sounds silly, but I like to pipe the frosting in stars on top of brownies, or just add it to graham crackers. It just seems like a waste to throw it out.

Strawberry Cupcake Filling

Ingredients

16 oz frozen sliced strawberries
1/3 C sugar
3 TBS cornstarch
1 tsp lemon juice

Instructions

Drain strawberries and refrigerate. Keep the liquid/strawberry juice.
Add water to the strawberry juice until you have 1 1/4 cups.
In large pot, mix water/strawberry juice , sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice. Make sure it is well mixed and all the cornstarch dissolved before you start heating.
Cook, stirring, until the mixture boils and thickens.
Chill mixture, then mix in the strawberries.
Refrigerate until ready to fill cupcakes.
Once filled and decorated, cupcakes should be refrigerated until serving time.