Red Velvet Cupcakes

I started my research for the Red Velvet Cupcakes and decided on a mix of a couple recipes. One was from Paula Deen on the foodnetwork.com that I had actually seen her making one time. The other was from smitten kitchen. They were similar, each with a few tweaks. I used the bones of Paula's recipe, but I dressed it up a bit with some ideas from Deb and some of my own preferences.

I was interested in using cake flour, since I had it on hand and I thought it would lend to a lighter cupcake. It's hard to know what the dominant flavor in this cake is. I think it should be the cocoa, although as you know, it's not a chocolate cake.

I usually bake exclusively with olive oil, but I was worried since there aren't a lot of strong flavors in this, that it might stand out. Therefore I bought a canola oil blend that was supposed to be somewhat healthy. It worked perfectly. Here is a shot of the eggs, sugar, and oil, which you blend together to start the cake. To this you add the red food coloring. Little did I realize how much food coloring that this recipe calls for. Wow!! I was really surprised. I only had one of those kits of food coloring with the 4 small vials of color. Those have about 2 teaspoons of color in each. The recipe calls for 6 teaspoons of food coloring. As a result, my cake wasn't quite as red as it probably should have been. But it seemed pretty red to me!

Once you have the vinegar, food coloring and vanilla incorporated in the egg/sugar/oil mixture, add in the dry ingredients. I sifted my cake flour, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder together into a bowl. Cake flour is particularly susceptible to being really dense in the package, so it's a good idea to sift it before you measure it. Scooping and leveling off the top is the safest way to make sure that you aren't adding too much flour. My batter was really thin, which concerned me. It ended up being great. I actually had more than I could fit in my muffin tins, because I only have 12. The thin batter made for these really light and moist cupcakes.

I filled the tins with about 1/3 cup of batter. This is about 1/3 of the strength of the red the recipe called for.

And after about 20-25 minutes in a 350 degree oven, they were puffed up and ready to come out and cool. On to the frosting...

I combined 8 oz. of cream cheese and one stick of butter in a large bowl. Once softened, I beat these together with an electric mixer. Then I added about 3 cups, maybe a little more of powdered sugar. Once I got the consistency of frosting that I wanted, I put the bowl back in the fridge to chill everything down just a bit before frosting. This helps to get a nice thick swath of frosting on the cupcake.

The final product, cake + frosting was really delicious. I never really thought much about red velvet cake before, but I could see these really appealing to a wide variety of people. I kicked up the cocoa content, especially becuase I still had some wonderful organic dagoba cocoa powder on hand. I used 3 tablespoons, which was 3 times the amount that Paula specified in her recipe. I am a chocolate person, so this was perfect for me, but if you want the true to form red velvet cake, you probably could go with 2 tablespoons. So finally, here is the recipe.

Red Velvet Cupcakes (yield, about 18 cupcakes)

3 cups of cake flour

3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 & 1/2 cups sugar

1 & 1/2 cups canola oil

1 cup buttermilk

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla

at least 2 and up to 6 teaspoons of red food coloring

Sift together the dry ingredients. In a stand mixer, or with an electric mixer, beat together the oil and sugar until fully incorporated. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Add the vanilla, vinegar, and food coloring and beat slowly until incorporated, taking care not to splash the red food coloring. Add about half of the buttermilk and half of the dry ingredients and mix to incorporate. Add the remaining half of each and mix until almost incoporated. Using a silicon spatula, fold the remaining dry ingredients into the wet until just incorporated. Using a 1/3 cup measure, pour batter into prepared muffin tins. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Cool on wire racks for at least 1 hour before icing.

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz softened cream cheese

1 stick butter

3 cups to 1 pound of confectioners sugar

Cream softened butter and cream cheese together with an electric mixer. Add the sugar a cup at a time, until a thick icing forms. Chill for 20 minutes before using.