Love & Lentil: Red Velvet Cake and Cupcakes

Feb 14, 2011

Red Velvet Cake and Cupcakes

Happy Valentines Day to all of you out there. Thanks for all the love. And sending it all back right to you.

So until last evening I had absolutely no plans of making anything. After a whole weekend of re organizing the house (i.e my closets and pantry). I finally sat down to watch the Grammy's and suddenly remembered that Valentines day was today. And I kind of just mentioned - maybe I should do something for the blog. (I know.. forget actual people!) My daughter got all excited that I was going to make cupcakes. TH told me - just relax no big deal, you don't have to bake anything. To this, the little one got all worked up, fisted up and declared - In this house, we always bake. We bake for everything and Valentines Day should not be missed. True.

So I got up and looked for a recipe for Red Velvet cupcakes and came across this and absolutely loved the post. And my daughter even more because it had her fav X and O's. So, this was it. Thank you Picky Cook for an excellent recipe! Loved every bit of the end result. Even though mine is not as pretty as yours - it tasted just perfect. The way I want a red velvet cake to taste.

I used the same measurements in the recipe for the cupcakes. But only made about 12 cupcakes. I poured the remaining batter in a heart shaped pan and made a little festive heart cake.

On the icing though, I halved the recipe provided. Since I had only half of the cupcakes anyways. And also, my icing was a little on the soft side and not really stiff - so it was a little painful to actually pipe the icing. But since it was not going to get perfect anyway, I just handed over the icing bag to my little one and she had a ball piping the X's and O's and one little heart - she also tried to write LOVE on one - but the cupcake just was small for that!

Here's the recipe from Picky Cooks -

2 1/2 cups sifted cake flour - sift it before you measure it.
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 oz. red food coloring (two bottles)
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
1 teaspoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon baking soda

Sift the flour and then measure out 2 1/2 cups. Then, add the baking powder and the salt and sift one more time and set aside.

Beat together the butter and sugar till creamy.

Add the eggs one at at time and keep beating at medium speed till mixed well.
Also, add the vanilla essence and beat together well.

In a small bowl, mix together the cocoa powder and the red food coloring and stir well to make a smooth paste without lumps. Also, another thing - the recipe calls for 2 bottles of 1oz red food color. I used 1 bottle and also added some red food color concentrate. But if you want the real bright red like the original recipe, go ahead and use the 2 bottles. Side note - I'm still trying to get the redness off my tongue from last night!

Add the red paste to the batter.

Does that not look gorgeous already!

Add the sifted flour and buttermilk alternately starting and ending with the flour. Keep scraping off the sides to mix in all the flour.

Now I just wish I could eat it right now. So pretty!

We're almost done. Just need a little bit more oomph. Enter Vinegar and baking soda. Mix them together in a small bowl and love the little bubbles popping up.

Mix the bubbling soda vinegar mix with the batter. Mix well.

Pour halfway into little cupcake liners.

Bake in a pre heated oven at 350 F for about 18-20 mins. Until they are just perfect. No pressure.

For the cream cheese icing, here's the recipe again from Picky cook's site -

16 oz. cream cheese (2 packages), softened
1/2 cup unsalted butter (one stick), softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
pinch of salt

I made just half of the above quantity. So it was 1 block of cream cheese, half a stick of butter and 1 1/4 cups of powdered sugar.

Decorate them any way you want. My little one of course wanted the X's and O's exactly like she saw on Picky Cook's site - and so yes, we made that too!

And a little shaky heart!

How can I not show you how bright and red it was inside?

This was the cake with the remaining batter after the 12 cupcakes. Looks wonderful, doesn't it? Instead of just cutting the cake, use a cookie cutter and cut little heart shapes and you can decorate them individually too. Which is what I did and shared with my neighbor.