Eat Your Heart Out

When my guests walked in and saw these laying on the table they were shocked. “Those look amazing!” followed by a whisper “…What are they?”

I think that means I did a pretty good job.

I was inspired by Eat The Dead’s heart cupcakes, and knew I had to make them.

In my extensive googling of ‘creepy heart cupcakes’ I saw pretty much everyone using red food colouring at the end for the glaze, but that doesn’t work for me. I have a sensitivity to food colourings so I wanted something as natural as possible, as well as not wanting to stain my guest’s mouths red. Cherry pie filling mixed with some homemade chocolate syrup did the trick, and added a lovely flavour.

I also intended for these to be gluten free for my celiac guest, but I couldn’t find a fondant without wheat so I made some normal cupcakes as well with buttercream frosting and white chocolate moulds.

What I used:

• Gluten free chocolate cake mix, replacing the water with milk and adding extra butter and eggs. (If I need to bake GF I’d rather just alter a box mix than make it from scratch)
• Chocolate buttercream icing.
• Red fondant.
• Cherry pie filling. (Large cherries removed)
• Chocolate syrup. (1 pt cocoa, 2 pts white sugar, enough water for the consistency you want, whisked over heat until everything is dissolved.)

After the cupcakes were baked and cooled, I used one and a half cupcakes for the size. Crumb-coated them roughly, and laid them in the centre of a rolled out piece of fondant. (Make sure to dust the fondant and your counter with icing sugar before rolling.)

Folding the fondant over the cupcakes, I trimmed off excess from the edges and sealed everything with a bit of water I dipped my finger in (use water very sparingly!) Using the cut off bits, I cut small rectangles just big enough to wrap around my finger to make a tube, and stuck them on.

I waited until right before people showed up to add the cherry glaze so the fondant wouldn’t melt on me. The one that didn’t get fully eaten looked a bit droopy at the end of the night so I feel like that was a good call. If you make these at a dinner party and are serving them for dessert, use a brush to coat them right before bringing them out.

Plate aftermath.