I entered a cupcake competition at the weekend and the theme was music. I didn’t have any ideas in mind so I asked my twitter friends for ideas and one of them came up with the idea!

The cupcakes themselves use the red velvet recipe I tried before.

For the tongues and lips I used flowerpaste and made the items a couple of nights before so they would harden up a bit. I used gel food colouring to colour them – unfortunately I couldn’t get it to turn bright red! To make the templates, print out the image below twice, cutting out the tongue on one. On the other, draw in the rest of the lips and cut them out.

I then cut around the lip templates using the pink/red flowerpaste then I gently brushed them with strawberry jam and sprinkled them with red sanding sugar. Then I cut out the tongues using the pink flowerpaste, and left them to dry with the lips. When they had hardened and dried, I used white writing icing to accent the lips and tongue.

I made some cream cheese buttercream and piped it on using a piping bag, then sprinkled a few edible gold stars on. Then I added the lips and put the tongue on so it poked out.

Nom and roll!

These red velvet cupcakes have been causing me trauma today! I’ve been trying to learn how to make a swirly frosting like in this video:

Unfortunately the recipe I used was for a large red velvet cake, not cupcakes and the frosting wasn’t strong enough to hold the shape when trying to create swirls on top. Instead I found a batch of pre-made vanilla buttercream in the cupboard and used that to practice. I also made my own sugar sand really easily.

These cupcakes make perfect Valentines cupcakes – you can sprinkle these edible heart sprinkles on top too for that loving feeling. Despite being a really thick batter, they are incredibly light.

The recipes I used for the cupcakes is from Red Velvet Cake recipe from Joy Of Baking.com.

Red velvet cupcakes are tradionally frosted with cream cheese but you will need a stiffer mix like this recipe for cream cheese frosting All Recipes.com. Or you could just use a vanilla buttercream recipe – just make sure to put it in the fridge so it stiffens up if you make it yourself. Make swirly frosting on the top of the cupcakes as in the video.

I pre-prepared the sugar by mixing 6tbsp of granulated sugar with 1tsp red liquid food colouring. I stirred it well to ensure all the sugar was red then turned it onto a plate with a piece of kitchen roll to dry it out. Once dried, split up any big pieces with the back of a spoon.

Gently sprinkle the sugar on top of the cupcakes.