Red Velvet Cupcakes

I haven't written a blog in a while. It was a very busy April and now I am getting into May and haven't written about any cupcakes that I have most definitely made. We've had numerous soccer games (or rain outs anyway), my son's birthday party, I helped with the Holy Week lunches at church,by providing cupcakes, of course :) and I have subbed at the school a bunch!!! During the Holy Week lunches, I took a few requests from some special people on what kind of cupcakes they wanted. One very special lady asked for Red Velvet. I do not like red velvet cake. . . or at least what I have tasted as red velvet. I have tried the cake mix variety and a bite of other red velvet cakes and not been a fan. Because this lady is so special, I decided I would try to find a suitable recipe. Once I made this, several people thoroughly enjoyed it so I am very glad I adjusted this recipe to meet my cupcake fancy.

Powdered butter milk

One thing this recipe called for was buttermilk. I only use buttermilk sparingly, so I really don't like to buy it. My sister-in-law has in the past, used a "powdered buttermilk" and I thought I would give it a go for this recipe. This is an easy product to use. The container shows on the back how much powder and water to use. It states to put the powder in with your dry ingredients, and put the water in when it says to put in the buttermilk. If you buy buttermilk a lot or if you just "sour" your milk with a tablespoon of vinegar, this paragraph will be pointless for you. Just ignore it :) I am going to write my recipe below in the way that I did it. You can always check the above link to follow that recipe.


Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cocoa
1 cups buttermilk* (4TBSP buttermilk powder and 1 cup water, divided)
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
2 eggs
Red food coloring (I used a gel coloring)
1 teaspoon distilled vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla

A stiff cream cheese frosting to swirl on cupcakes (recipe listed below)



Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 and line muffin tin with cupcake liners.

Sift dry ingredients together: flour, sugar, baking soda and cocoa. *This is also when I added my 4 TBSP powdered buttermilk to the dry ingredients. In another bowl add the buttermilk (or in my case water), oil, eggs, vinegar, vanilla and food coloring. Mix the two together and put in prepared cupcake pans. I baked this for about 22 minutes and I believe I got about 18 out of this recipe.

It was a little "pink" before it was baked

On the outside, it was a little pink.

Cream Cheese Frosting
Mix these ingredients until smooth.
*1 stick of butter
*1 8 oz package cream cheese
*1 tsp vanilla
*8 cups powdered sugar (more if you need it stiffer to pipe, maybe a little less if you just want to spread it)
*2 TBSP milk (dependent on how thin or thick you want your icing)

Iced with a round tip, Red Velvet cupcakes.

These were well received by everyone. I actually liked the taste of this. It just goes to show a good recipe (and a cake not over done) can really change your perspective on something you might not like.