Strawberry cupcakes with chocolate hearts

My husband had a church meeting/potluck that I was invited to. So... looking for any excuse to bake cupcakes, I made these yummy strawberry cupcakes. I found the recipe on Martha Stewart's website, although the recipe is from Sprinkles bakery. I love the fact that both the cake and icing recipe use pureed fresh strawberries. The berries have looked so wonderful at our grocery stores and farmers markets!!! 

The cake baked up very nicely and had a wonderful light texture with a great flavor. I whipped the frosting more than the recipe suggested since I wanted an airy frosting that I could put the chocolate decoration into. I found the heart pattern in the word clipart directory. I experimented using the Wilton candy squeeze bottles instead of pastry bags for the hearts. I would not recommend it since I kept getting splotches of air in the chocolate (a problem that I have not had with disposable plastic bags). However, the melting of the chocolate was quite simple in the bottles. I just boiled water in a saucepan, let it cool some, and added the squeeze bottles to the water. I kneaded the bottles and that was enough to produce nicely melted chocolate. I am sure they work much better for filling molds than they did for piping freehand

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