Valentine's Day raspberry cupcakes

I love the way these cupcakes look with their red bottoms and pastel pink tops. They are inspired by Shirley Temple pink lemonades, with a raspberry vanilla flavour. I made my cakes sugar, dairy and gluten free but did ice them with old-fashioned buttercream icing - I just made sure to spread a fairly thin layer so as to make them a little less decadent.

I used a special cake mix to make these (which had all the dietary requirements I needed already sorted) but you could use any cake mix you like or make a simple vanilla cupcake recipe.

Valentine's Day Raspberry Cupcakes

Ingredients:

* 1 vanilla cake mix - make according to requirements, mine required 2 eggs, 700 ml of soy milk and 80 grams of butter.
* 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
* 1 tablespoon of flour (or gluten-free flour)
* red food colouring
* 1 tablespoon of red cordial
* 1/2 stick of butter (room temperature)
* powdered sugar
* raspberry lollies

Method:

1. Grease a 12-capacity muffin tin and preheat oven to 180 degrees.
2. Make the cake mix according to packet instructions and add the vanilla extract.
3. Take out 1/4 cup of the cake batter and put into a smaller bowl.
4. To the smaller bowl of cake batter, add a dash of red food colouring and a tablespoon of red cordial. Add the tablespoon of flour and mix until combined.
5. Fill each muffin hole with a tablespoon of the red cake mix until evenly divided amongst the tin.
6. Top up the muffin holes with the other cake batter until evenly divided although don't fill them more than 3/4 of the way up otherwise they will overflow when cooking.
7. Bake in a moderate oven for 20 minutes until risen and golden brown.
8. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool.
9. To make the icing, beat the butter and gradually sift in icing sugar tablespoons at a time until you reach a nice smooth consistency. Add in a dash of red food colouring and beat through. You may need to add a little more icing sugar if the food colouring made the icing a little runny but I didn't need to for mine.
10. Ice each cake with a smooth even layer of pink icing.
11. Top with raspberry lolly to finish.

Store in an airtight container, which will keey them fresh for a couple of days.

Contains 152 calories per cupcake.