Happy Valentine's Day

Happy valentine's Day! I hope everyone indulged that sweet tooth, fried finger or take out taste bud that you have been longing to! I plan on taking my valentine to a yummy Sushi resturant tonight, however I couldn't let the holiday pass without a little baking!

My mom bakes the same butter cookies each and every Valentines Day and when I tell you they are to die for...I am not exaggerating! They are completely wonderful. She has made them every year for as long as I can remember. When I moved to NYC I started making them for Erin, however my mom continued to mail them in care packages every year, and this year she delivered them to us in person! Erin and I had to share, but I guess that's for the best seeing how there is a pound of butter in the recipe. Again, not exaggerating.

In my fashion I wanted to attempt to make something festive, yet still healthy. I had stumbled across this recipe awhile back and thought Valentine's day was the perfect holiday to attempt it. These Red Velvet Cupcakes sounded too good to pass by. Now to be fair I have never had real red velvet cake, so I am not sure how these compare. However the red made it festive and the cupcake element made it yummy.

These were super simple to make and although they didn't have a WOW factor for me, they were still good. I have a feeling that the red food coloring is suppose to trick you into thinking they were "red velvet" because to be honest I didn't taste much of a difference from normal cupcakes. I did subsitute splenda for half the sugar, and used completely Fat Free cream cheese for the frosting. I should warn you that after a day or so they tend to harden due to the fact that there is little to no fat in the mix.

Erin decorated each of these will a valentine's candy and gave her rating of 7.4. She claimed that she would have increased the rating had I let her add the whole tube of red dye to the batter :).

That's my Valentine for you!