Indulging in Red Velvet... Cupcake Style!

Well, it’s that time of year where red, white and a splash of green is very popular. Christmas! Something else with similar colours that has become rather popular is Red Velvet Cupcakes! These gorgeous looking red cupcakes adorned with cream cheese icing are not only attractive but tasty. Well, I like most things chocolate anyway so I’m biased. The cupcakes are chocolate tasting but the red colouring give it this full and vibrant look as far as food goes and is quite irresistible.

I had a party last weekend for about 50 guests and my OH thought it was a good idea to make these Red Velvet Cupcakes as a party favour. Nice suggestion but I was getting my hopes up if I was expecting any help from there! : )

Before I set to work, I had to first of all get my hands on bottles and bottles of red food colouring which is NOT easy to find in Seoul. The type you get here is the gel type which comes in a pack with 4 other colours and that one tube of red is really insufficient for my needs. I have used that red colouring before but I found it too weak and for what I needed it for I would have to buy boxes and boxes of it which will become quite $$$. If you are desperate, you can find this brand (it’s the only food colouring I have found in Seoul) in most of the major supermarket chains eg. Lotte Mart, E-Mart.

To solve my problem, I had my OH buy them from Australia. There you can get the Queen’s brand food colouring that comes in little 50ml bottles. I used about 5 bottles. However, he had to look in several stores as I suspect due to the Christmas season, red food colouring was very popular.

I had done some research on the internet to find a good Red Velvet Cupcake recipe. Most of them required the same ingredients so I used this one recommended on the House of Annie blog. Overall the recipe is easy to follow, the most tedious of the lot was making the cake flour which I can’t find in Seoul. I followed a method of making my own cake flour and buttermilk to get as close to the recipe as possible.

When you are at the stage of adding the red colouring in, the batter looks really bright and is still quite liquidy but the moment you add the flour that has been whisked with the cocoa powder and salt, the mixture becomes this heavenly red with almost chrome like swirls inside. It was beautiful! I have never been so excited about batter colour before! It was crazy!

The photo doesn't do the batter colour justice. When you make it you will know what I mean.

I did this in 3 batches so really had my chance to admire the batter colour. *LOL* In the pictures and also when you buy cupcakes from bakeries, the cupcake sits quite high up from the cupcake liners itself. Although the recipe asks me to fill the cupcake liners to 2/3 full, the cake itself does not rise very much so I filled it close to the rim (about 3mm from edge) and it was the right height for me as after I added the icing, I still had to fit it into a box.

Here they are out of the oven.

Em’s magnificent Cream Cheese Icing which is also in the same recipe was really GOLD! It melts in your mouth and I reckon it would go well with any type of cupcake! I used the same cream cheese recipe to spread over my banana cake and it added a little ZAZZ to the banana cake that’s for sure.

After the cakes had cooled, I added the cream cheese icing with a frosting syringe that I found in Sydney. As opposed to your traditional frosting piping bag, this syringe is easier to control and for something as small as a cupcake I found it gave me a lot of control. The only drawback is the syringe is not large, so you keep having to refill it every 2.5 cupcakes that you decorate (depending on the kind of decoration that you use).

There is something soothing about spreading icing on the cupcakes.

I ended up with 2 types of decoration, one was just swirling it over the top of the cupcake and the other with little flowers. Over that I sprinkled some pink and red lovehearts. I think they turned out quite well.

I experiemented the lovehearts first on the cupcakes with the swirled icing.

Then on all of them!

The cupcakes taste good on the first day but by the second day, I found the cupcake to be too dense. So, I am still looking for another recipe where the cupcake is fluffier and stays that way for 2-3 days.