Valentine’s {Love} Cupcakes

I’m definitely a sucker for it.

I’d use it on almost every cookie if I could (but I try to restrain myself), but when I found these sparkly LOVE stickers at Michael’s Craft Store I knew I had to make a sugar version of them.

I ended up making simple royal icing decorations (also known as transfers, runouts or floodwork), instead of cookies, for these Valentine cupcakes.

If you’d like to try making these cupcakes and icing decorations, check out the how-tos below.

For the Valentine {Love} Cupcakes, you’ll need:

Vanilla Cupcake Recipe and Vanilla Buttercream Recipe

For the Royal Icing {Love} Toppers, you’ll need:

Royal Icing Recipe and Food Gel Colorings
Piping Tip #2
Piping Bag
Coupler
Parchment Paper or Transparency Sheet
Shortening
Disco Dust

How to Make {Love} Sugar Decorations:

I used my KopyKake projector to project the Love stickers so I could trace the image, but if you’ve got drawing talent you won’t need the projector. If you’d like to see a KopyKake projector tutorial, click here. These shapes are so simple that you really don’t need the KopyKake though; you could just trace them! I projected them because I was able to change the size and make them bigger that way.

So, let’s begin!

Cut the transparency (or parchment paper) out just larger than the size of the image you’re piping. Lightly coat transparency, with a small amount of shortening using some paper towel. This helps make the royal icing shape easier to remove when it’s dry.

2. Pipe royal icing outline

3. Flood or fill in your outline

4. Gently shake the transparency left to right to help the icing smooth over.

5. Shake disco dust onto your wet icing

6. Pick transparency up and pour excess disco dust back into container. Some disco dust sticks to the shortening but you can probably do a better job than me if you’re not rushing.

7. Make extras of your shapes as royal icing transfers can break easily, especially if they’re a delicate design. These ones weren’t too breakable as they were a bit larger. (I think I’d make them smaller next time though; they’re a bit too big for the cupcakes now that I see them on top).

8. Let icing dry for at least 24 hours.

9. Gently remove icing decoration by peeling the backing away

10. Place on cupcakes, cakes, cookies etc.

It may look like it took a long time to make the “LOVE letters’ with all the pics, but they’re actually quite quick and easy to make. Once I made and colored the royal icing, creating (doubles of) these took about 10 minutes. Then it was just a matter of letting them dry for 24 hours and making the icing and cupcakes.

Here’s a slideshow of the whole icing decoration process if you’d prefer to see it that way:

“How to Make a Royal Icing Decoration“

(Click here if you can’t see the slideshow).

I made the pink ‘letter O’ reverse the original sticker as it was easier to make that way. For a visual how-to view the slideshow below.

“Royal Icing Valentine Heart How-To“

(Click here if you can’t see the slideshow).

To see another post on how to put disco dust on cookies, click here or to see another post on making royal icing transfers, click here.