In September, I started a cupcake adventure. If you haven't read about it yet, you can do so here. ***
Whenever I have several batches of cupcakes to make, I start by measuring out my dry ingredients into labeled containers. It saves me a lot of time measuring and dividing.
As with most every recipe, you start by creaming butter and sugar, and then add the egg(s):
With Red Velvet cake, you use an obscene amount of red food coloring...this recipe called for 2 TB!
Obviously, all that coloring give the batter a killer shade of maroon:
Then, the dry ingredients are added.
As is the milk. You'll notice that the dry ingredients include cocoa...Red Velvet cake is essentially just chocolate cake with a boatload of dye in it.
Here's our batter, ready to be baked!
And here they are, fresh out of the oven!
The icing the author suggests for these cupcakes is similar to the one I use for most of my cakes: a buttercream made from shortening, powdered sugar, water, and flavoring (vanilla used here).
Once that was whipped up, I prepped my piping bag to make decorating a snap.
LOVE LOVE LOVE rosettes. They are so simple and so elegant all at the same time. And what's NOT to love about sugar sprinkles?!
I also made some red buttercream and accented the rosettes with large white heart sprinkles.
When the icings started running low, I mixed the two together to create a swirl effect.
They looked pretty cute as a set, too. These did very well at my cousin's bake sale. I guess everyone loves Red Velvet!
