Happy Valentines Day!

I wanted to make some cupcakes for St Valentine's Day, but didn't have a recipe, so these cupcakes were a bit experimental (just like my choc chip peppermint cupcakes, which I never finished!). I had a basic idea of the flavours I wanted: I wanted it to be a strawberry and vanilla cupcake with yogurt in it.

These are the ingredients I started with:

And here's what they turned out like:

Pretty cute aren't they, in their shiny pink foil cases!

To make them, I made a vanilla cupcake mix and added a punnet of chopped up strawberries like so

Mmm look at those strawberries!

Strawberry and Vanilla Cupcakes

Ingredients:

3 eggs

150g butter, softened

1 cup caster sugar

1/2 cup vanilla yogurt

1 1/2 cups self-raising flour, sifted

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

punnet of strawberries, hulled, and cut into quarters

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius. Line a 12 cupcake pan with cupcake cases. In a medium sized bowl, beat the butter for 1-2 minutes or until it has turned a paler colour. Add the sugar in 2-3 batches, beating well after each addition. Add the eggs one at a time, beating until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla.

2. Add the flour and yogurt in batches, starting and finishing with the flour, beating on low speed after each addition.

3. Add the strawberries to the mixture, stirring in gently with a spatula.

4. Divide the mixture evenly between the cupcake cases. Bake for 18-20 minutes. Leave for 5 minutes in pan, then leave to cool completely on a wire rack before decorating.

To decorate, I melted some chocolate and put it into a ziplock bag, cut the corner off, and piped hearts onto the cupcakes.

Also, to make them even prettier, you could swirl some heated and sieved strawberry jam (or even pink food colouring) into the cupcakes before they go in the oven, to create a marble effect.

Happy Baking!