a99kitten's Musings

Ok, next stop on my cupcake tasting experiment!

Today is a grand experiment! I have never baked cupcakes from scratch – no boxed mix! There are no store-bought red velvet cake mixes that I know of (Sprinkles sells one I think though) so I figured go with making something I couldn’t get a mix for anyway. Especially since I won’t attempt chocolate cupcakes from scratch as Dough Boy and Betty do such a GREAT job with their nummy mixes :)

I found this recipe on www.pinchmysalt.com when I was searching for a homemade cream cheese frosting recipe. It seemed easy-ish (knock on wood…) Not toooooo many ingredients or crazy prep work.

My hand mixer is in Tahoe so I will be breaking out the Kitchen Aid countertop mixer that we got as a wedding gift. 10 years ago. And I think this might be the first time I’ve used it :) Excellent maiden voyage (after I clean the layer of dust off of it!!)  :)

Here are the ingredients:

Red Velvet cupcake ingredients

You need to use room temperature eggs and buttermilk (clearly diet cupcakes…) and softened butter so plan that a little early (unlike me who had to wait a while after planning to start!) :)

Had to sift and then re-sift the flour. Between this and the cheese grating from last week, I learned to switch off hands doing it so both the left and the right are equally as sore. I wonder if boys do that too :-0

So you make the red part of red velvet using red dye (I read other ways to do this in other recipes but I like this recipe.) Oh, and..so…red DYE stains your fingers…go figure :)

Red part of recipe

Then you mix, and mix and mix some more of the various bowls of ingredients (the butter/sugar mixture, the flour mixture, the red and cocoa mixture (above) and then the the vinegar and baking soda (science class time – it fizzes!) mixture last.  p.s this mixer was AWESOME. To quote Ferris Bueller “It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.”

Batter up!

Then you fill your cupcake pans using an ice cream scoop.  At first I thought that was goofy but it works great!!

Now you bake for 20 minutes and voila! 24 naked cupcakes!

Naked cupcakes

Now I let them cool for a while (so I could get other chores in the house done!) and then frosted them with the same cream cheese frosting I tested a couple weeks ago, also from www.pinchmysalt.com:\. I used red sprinkles to decorate :)

YUM! - Done!

Storm wanted to help with the cupcakes….

Storm wants to help frost cupcakes..

His argument was that these were not chocolate! I told him we had to use cocoa so no dice..he asked why I didn’t make pupcakes then. Good question!

I just tried one…yum….

Bite!

Would I make them again JUST for me? No..I’d just drive to Sprinkles for a cupcake. But if I needed to bring cupcakes to something, it was someone’s birthday or someone wanted them – yes, they are quite tasty :)

Now I am putting 3 in tupperware for home and the rest into other tupperware to take to the office to make them fat :)

Recipes here: http://pinchmysalt.com/2009/02/04/red-velvet-cupcakes-with-cream-cheese-frosting-recipe/