Recipe : Red Velvet Cupcakes

I got the itch to bake over the weekend. It’s been ages since I baked anything and even longer since I baked cupcakes. I miss it.

So I decided to have a bit of fun and take the opportunity and fiddle with my baking techniques. Now all of my cupcake recipes follow your stock standard technique of creaming the butter and sugar, adding eggs and then  adding flour and liquid alternately. I had read of a slightly different technique that resulted in a evenly risen cupcake, you know the ones with the lovely flat tops just screaming to be piled with delicious buttercream frosting? Well I gave it a shot and it worked so well that I’m going to switch all my recipes to this method!

I thought I’d share my Red Velvet cupcake recipe again with the revised new method. 

Download the printable recipe sheet.

Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

makes 12 – 14 cupcakes

1 ¼ cup of plain flour

½ teas of baking powder

½ teas of salt

2 -3 tabs of cocoa

¾ cup of sugar

1 egg

1 teas of vanilla

1 -2 tabs of red food colouring

½ cup of buttermilk

¼ cup of butter

½ teas of vinegar

½ teas of bi carb soda

1.  Combine flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa in a bowl and set aside.

2. Combined butter and buttermilk in a bowl and microwave until butter

    has just melted. Set aside to cool slightly.

3.  In a large bowl, whisk egg and sugar until pale and fluffy.

4. Add vanilla and colouring and mix well.

5. Mix in 1/3 of the dry ingredients.

6. Mix in 1/3 of the butter/buttermilk.

7. Repeat until all the dry ingredients and buttermilk are mixed in.

8. In a small bowl, combine vinegar and bi-carb soda.

9. Fold the vinegar/bi-carb in with a spatula only.

Fill cupcake cases to 2/3 full and bake at 160c (150c fan forced) for 25 mins

or until a toothpick removes clean. Allow the cupcakes to cool for 5 mins in

the pan before removing to cool completely on a wire rack.

Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

60 g Butter

150g Cream Cheese

2 1/2 C Icing Sugar

1/2 Teasp Ground Cinnamon

1. Cream together the butter and cream cheese until light, fluffy and pale.

2. Beat in cinnamon and half the icing sugar

3. Beat in the remaining icing sugar

4. Decorate you gorgeous cupcakes!

I topped my cupcakes with a little grated chocolate. Yum.

You can play with the quantities of cocoa and food colouring, I like to use 2 tabs of food colouring and 3 tabs of cocoa, but feel free to experiment because different cocoa powders produce different flavours.

I hope you enjoy!