Good evening dear ... online readers (is that what you guys are called? I have no idea.)
I am finishing up my very first internship this Thursday and decided to bake some cupcakes for my colleagues before I leave. Thus, I made Red Velvet Cupcakes.
Before I dive into the details about the recipe, let me just say that this is probably my 4th or 5th time baking red velvet cupcakes. Each time I tried to make these, they either came out super dry or super dense or flavorless and EACH failed attempt left me depressed and pensive about my life. That's right - I used the word "pensive" which goes to show the scars these cupcakes have left me.
Howeverrrr, my cousin once made a red velvet cake and although she didn't have the right colouring, the cake turned out moist and wonderful. Therefore, I decided to take a leap of faith last week and tried that recipe to make 40 red velvet cupcakes for my office.
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| As usual, I always place my ingredients in the picture to make it look ... like I'm baking which may not need so much of proof, now that I think about it. Hmm. |
I have always found making red velvet cupcakes is sort of a chemistry experiment. This is probably because there is not much technique involved except for dumping and mixing in the ingredients AND (for those who didn't know) the red colour in this velvet cake is due to the chemical reaction between the vinegar and the buttermilk which brings out this reddish brown chemical compound called anthocyanin in cocoa powder.*exit nerd mode*
Just a tip, I have read numerous recipes where if you use Dutch processed cocoa powder, the red colour is brighter. You could try that if you want but I didn't because I am broke. (Ain't no body got time for that !)
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| Just in case you didn't know how to weigh flour :D |
Like I said, this recipe is like a chemistry experiment so I highly advise you to measure out all your ingredients before carrying out this recipe. Also - please, PLEASE stick closely to the recipe. I will tell you why in a while.
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| Don't worry. It's colouring. I know. You didn't care. I'm just pretending you did. |
Someone get a plaster - STAT! Haha. Just kidding. It's not funny. I know. I just..well, never mind. Anyways, I have a small container of Wilton's Red Red gel colouring. This recipe required 1-2 fl.oz and gel colouring is really really concentrated so I mixed in about 1/8 tsp with 1-2 tbsp of water before adding it into the mix.
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| This is before adding the dry ingredients - it's so RED! (Batch #1) |
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| After adding the dry ingredients ... it became brown :( |
After I added in the dry ingredients, the mix became a tad brown. I am kind of an obsessive freak so I added a bit more colouring but please keep in mind that if you add a lot, the taste of the colouring will be overpowering in the cake.
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| Before...(duh |
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| After... |
Alright this is batch #1. I used olive oil, halved the salt amount, cane sugar and added a bit more colouring to this. The cupcakes came out flat. There was no normal tiny hill a cupcake usually gets. It was moist and flavourful but there was no hill. However, in batch 2...
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| Batch #2 - After the dry ingredients were added |
As you can see from the picture above, it's a bit more brown. This is because I added lesser colouring, 1 tsp salt (just as the recipe mentioned), grape seed oil (ran out of olive oil) and caster sugar (ran out of cane sugar). I added 350 g of caster sugar in this as compared to 450 g of cane before. I googled and 1 cup of sugar is apparently 225 grams but I found the previous batter a tad too sweet so I reduced the amount of sugar in the next batch. I usually prefer to weigh my ingredients instead of measuring it out by cups. I think it's more accurate and accuracy is super duper important in baking. It's almost like chemistry except you can eat your result.
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| Batch #1 cupcakes are on the right and Batch #2 cupcakes are on the greyish black pans. There is a difference. Fo' sho'! |
Both the cupcakes turned out really well but if I had to choose, I would go with Batch #1. I thought they were more moist and flavourful compared to Batch #2. It could be the oil and sugar ratio that causes the very moist texture. Who knows but my colleagues liked both so it's really up to you how you want your cupcakes to be like.
Of course, for every red velvet cake/cupcake, there has to be a cream cheese frosting. You can't make red velvet cupcakes without this sweet, fluffy frosting. I was pretty tired from baking the cupcakes so I didn't take much pictures of the frosting except for the one below.
Do note that there are 2 cream cheese frosting recipes you can find on Divas Can Cook website. Either is fine but I preferred the Light Cream Cheese Frosting (
http://divascancook.com/2012/02/light-cream-cheese-frosting-recipe.html) because it wasn't too sweet and the frosting was quite aerated which I liked a lot.
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| So flufffyyyyyyy!!!! |
I added about 1 - 1.5 cups of icing sugar. The reason was mainly because I hate sifting and was pretty tired so I just sifted that much of icing sugar. Later, I realised I should have added one more cup because I could still taste the sourness of the cream cheese. (Is there such a word...'sourness'? But you know what I mean)
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| You can see the piping bag appearance above!! |
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| nom nom cupcakes. not so poopy this time. |
I must say piping is easier with the Wilton's decorative tips. I finished piping all 48 cupcakes (this is how many cupcakes I made after 2 batches) in about 15 minutes. Of course I know that the piping tool for cupcakes are normally 1M tip but I don't have it...yet. Till then, these piping bags with the decorative tips are lifesavers.
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| I know. It's sexy. |
Well that's all for my red velvet cupcakes. I hope people at my office enjoyed it! And I hope you guys try it out because it really is worth the shot. Remember, when you do - you can always give me your cupcake ;)
(sounds wrong.."your cupcake"..oh well)
Good night! до свидания! [Apparently I have readers from Russia - so that's for you guys;) ]
