Monday 23 January 2012

Made it Monday - Red Velvet Cupcakes

As seen on yesterday's Celebration Sunday post, I used this recipe.
Now there were a few things that are not in my favour -
  1. I have never had a red velvet cake before so I have no idea what they are supposed to taste like
  2. I only have a 6 hole muffin tin
  3. This recipe makes 30 cupcakes
If you decide to make these cupcakes then I warn you, the ingredients will look shocking, a cup and a half of vegetable oil and 3 cups of sugar look like diabetes and CHD all rolled into one! Be sure to use a large bowl, the bowl I am using in the picture below holds 4.5 litres, it is pretty full!
When all the ingredients are combined the mixture is fairly runny, I used a ladle to fill the cases with.
The red food colouring (a whole bottle!!) hasn't stained my earthenware bowl but do be careful with plastic ones as they might go red! It is much more vibrant in err.... "person" so I wasn't expecting the results.


Oven shot - rising well and looking pretty red, nice example of how much mess I make when baking!


And the end result! The cakes were more brown velvet to be honest which was disappointing, I might experiment with powder food colouring instead or try to find a food colouring which is artificial, the silly natural ones do seem to lack the oomph of old school e-number versions.
Most important though is the taste...as I have no comparison I have no idea if they taste normal or not. I was worried they would taste vinegary but there is no hint of it! The cake itself is very light albeit with a crisp top, perhaps over baking on my part or something but it is not burnt in any way. I'm not sure what it tastes of, kind of neutral tasting really! I mean it does have a flavour but nothing distinct!
The frosting was made a bit runnier than it should have been because I couldn't be arsed to weight out the cream cheese when it was only a little bit over what it should have been anyway. The frosting should have a health warning of its own! Serious unhealthy goodness! A definite don't ask and I won't tell situation.
It is so good I honestly felt compelled to stick my face in the bowl (I restrained myself).

There are far too many to fit on my cake stand!


If anyone else has made red velvet cakes and can let me in on the colour secret I would love to know!

If you are from the UK and don't have US measuring cups then this website will allow you to convert the measurements, you need to be converting volume rather than weight.

Happy baking!

2 comments:

Jenn said...

Hey Lucy! I used an artificial liquid food coloring and I only used the amount stated. Since the recipe only has 1 1/4 tsp. of cocoa, it wasn't too hard to make it super red? Not sure why yours turned more brown, maybe it was the brand of food coloring that was used?

Lucy said...

I think the problem is that here in the UK people have gotten their knickers in a twist over artificial colourings and everything has to be "natural". The natural colouring seems to have less of a kick to it, the only confusing part is the fact that it was super red for a while in the oven, a friend of mine has tried making red velvet cakes before and said they didn't turn out red either. I'm going to try to find a non natural colouring or try powder colouring and add a little extra water to make up for the lost liquid.
The recipe was seriously divine though, I've never made such light fluffy cake before, went down really well at work too!

When I try again I'll let you know if I get better results :)
So excited to be making the pineapple cake recipe this weekend!