Happy Valentine's Day!

Last night while studying for my first real test of my first semester at Cañada, I decided to bake red velvet cupcakes for my old clinic that hired me back because they desperately missed me (okay the last part may be a tad exaggerated). I made cream cheese frosting for the first time ever in my life too! But this definitely wasn't the first time I made red velvet cupcakes. The first time I baked them was also for Valentine's Day but I dusted powdered sugar hearts on them instead! Kind of a fun, less fatty thing to do I guess? Anywho, the cream cheese frosting, though, was super easy to make and definitely was a nice contrast to the red velvet.


The REAL baking came in right when I came home from work. I decided to try my hand at this recipe: Dark Chocolate Cupcakes with Nutella whipped cream. SO much respect for this person because they developed the recipe themselves! That's my huge hurdle for ever truly pursuing baking. I am waayyyy too far from being creative enough. But in any case, they were a hit! I'm so so happy. I really liked how the mixture was light and airy. I didn't think it was going to make for moist enough cupcakes but they were really good! And of course the Nutella whipped cream was freaking great.

This is the finished product. Some were hearts others were circles. 

I am so definitely making these again. To make them taste "darker" I actually only used 1 cup + about 1/8 cup of sugar. I mean there's so much sweetness in the Nutella you really don't miss it.

Also I wanted to say that a year ago today one of my best friends (who actually just got married last week) was visiting me last year in Ireland and we had an amazing Valentine's Day dinner which my then boyfriend was nice enough to let me have with just her. But I didn't know what was coming.. apparently. Haha. That's another story for another time. 

So all in all, I hope everyone had a fantastic Valentine's Day, Red Day (if you're Korean) or dia de San Valentin if you espeak espanish! Those are the only cultures I know well so I swear I'm not leaving others out on purpose!