This post is soooo long overdue, sorry!!
For Kristi's Birthday I made her a batch of Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting. All from scratch!
I planned on just using a box cuz I had almost NO time to do this, but to my dismay, Red Velvet Cake Mix is very hard to find. So I sucked it up and just decided to make them the good old fashioned way.
I took a cue from my most favoritest cookbook, More from Magnolia Bakery, and dove in.
Red Velvet Cupcakes:
3 1/3 cups cake flour (not self-rising)
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 1/4 cups sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
6 tablespoons red food coloring (I used one whole jar of frosting dye gel from Wilton's)
3 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 /12 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1 1/2 tsp cider vinegar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
Preheat your oven to 350, and get your cake pans greased and floured then lined with waxed paper. I decided on cupcakes, so I just used liners, but three 9-inch cake rounds could be also used if you wanted to do a layer cake.
In a small bowl, sift the cake flour and set aside. It's very important to use cake flour because it creates a nice delicate tender crumb, and substituting all purpose flour can get tricky. If you can't find cake flour and only have all purpose, use this article as a guideline.
In a large bowl with an electric mixer, (I used my Kitchen-Aid) cream the butter and sugar until super light and fluffy. It should take around 5 minutes and should look like below.
Add the eggs one at a time, cracking into a separate bowl to make sure you get no egg shells, and then beating well after each addition.
In another small bowl we're going to make our red mixture! Using a small whisk or fork mix well the cocoa, vanilla and red food coloring until smooth. It's a pretty thick mixture so make sure you clean out the whisk a few times as you mix to ensure it's even.
It should look pretty red as above. When it's mixed, go ahead and add it into the batter.
The color should be nice and bright red when it's done mixing.
In another small bowl (omg I know right? I just rinsed and used the same dang bowl) mix the buttermilk and salt. It sounds odd, but just do it ok? You are going to alternate adding this mixture with the flour into the batter in as equal of 3 parts as you can get.
This is when it starts looking like the kind of cake batter you want to lick off the spatula. With each addition just mix til incorporated, but make sure you don't over beat. This is where Michelle's brother Jim would make a lewd remark.
In that same small bowl, once again rinsed clean, mix the cider and vinegar to make the kind of thing found inside a 7th grade Science fair volcano. It's going to foam up. It's ok, just go ahead and add that into the batter as well.
Turn off the mixer, scrape the sides down into the bowl and mix well again until the batter is nice and smooth. Divide the batter equally among your chosen pans.
For a layer cake bake them for 30-40 minutes, cupcakes about 15-20. They should be done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with small crumbs. Let them cool and then frost with the icing of your choice.
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