Valentine’s Day used to feel all nice & special while I was in college. We used to plan to wear something in red (or avoid to do so – depending on the mood of the season) to college and have a lot of fun watching the Romeos run after their Juliets to propose (confess their love to). Thankfully I got spared & had a pretty uneventful college life as far as Valentine’s Day & it’s controversies were concerned.
Although in India, poor Saint Valentine and his day (and lovers who like to celebrate this day) have been at the receiving end of petty politicians & moral policemen who say it’s not part of Indian ‘culture’ to celebrate this day & have done all possible things to display their real culture (from destructing person & property to disrupting peace at large). Florists & greeting card/gift companies however rake in their moolah and red is clearly the colour of this season.
However, since I thought it was quite an uneventful day in my household, I decided to spruce up the atmosphere a bit by decorating it with red roses & baking some Red Velvet Cupcakes. Hubby was pleasantly surprised & we wound up the day with some special Val Day dinner at a nice restaurant. It was one of the nicest days of my life. When you start the day with no expectations whatsoever & it ends up with some lovely memories!
Red Velvet Cupcakes
Yield: 12 cupcakes
You Need:
For the cupcakes:
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1 cup (125gms) flour
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1 tbsp (10gms) cocoa powder
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1/4 tsp salt
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60gms unsalted butter at room temperature
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3/4th cup (150gms) granulated sugar
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1 large egg
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1/2 tsp vanilla extract
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1/2 cup (120ml) buttermilk or thin yogurt (not too sour) beaten well
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1 tbsp liquid red food colouring
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1/2 tsp baking powder
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1/2 tsp white vinegar (you can skip this & increase the baking powder by 1/2 tsp making it a total of 1 tsp baking powder)
Method:
To Make The Red Velvet Cupcakes:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) and line 12 muffin tins with paper cup liners.
2. Sift together the flour & cocoa powder (and salt – if you intend adding it)
3. In a large bowl beat the butter till soft & then add the sugar & beat till light & fluffy for about 2-3minutes
4. Add the egg and beat till incorporated, add the vanilla extract and beat again.
5. In a separate bowl, whisk the buttermilk & the red food colouring.
6. Add the sifted flour+cocoa mixture and the buttermilk+red colour mixture alternately in 3 parts, starting & ending with the flour.
7. In a small cup combine the vingegar (if you are using it) with the baking powder & wait for it to fizz a bit & immediately mix it to the batter.
8. Quickly pour batter into the prepared muffin cups upto the bring and smoothen with a spatula.
9. Bake for approx 20minutes or till a toothpick comes out clean.
10. Remove, cool completely on a wire rack.
11. Decorate with cream cheese frosting (I used a simple granulated sugar with butter mixture because the cupcakes didnt even last until they cooled!!) & serve
To Make The Cream Cheese Frosting:
1. Beat the cream cheese till smooth, add the vanilla extract and icing sugar and beat till smooth
2. Add the heavy cream gradually till you get a thick enough consistency to pipe. Add more sugar or cream as required
Red Velvet Cupcake With A Butter & Sugar Topping
Oooh..this looks yumm..
Thanks Rinku 🙂 These are pics frm the new camera 😉
To Anyonymous – I have mentioned 125grams of flour & not 125ml in my recipe above. I have taken it as per the recipe mentioned in joyofbaking.com. I always weigh my ingredients rather than just going by the 'cup' measurement. I should have probably put a slash '/' between the two figures. Thanks for your comment
that is really nice and moist
so is 125g of cake flour different from 125gr of plain flour? beacause i also want to try JoyofBaking recipe but i dont have cake flour so its quite confusing for me 🙁
hi Shireen, i want to ask about the measurement of the flour. JoyofBaking used 125grams (1 1/4 cups) of cake flour and u used 125grs (1 cup) of plain flour. so is the type of flour that makes the differece in the measurement? because i don't have cake flour so i want to know how much flour i have to use. thank you =)
@Huong Nguyen: I had adapted the recipe (which was exactly the same as what I have shown above) from joyofbaking.com. Now the link seems to have changed and the measures are doubled. Maybe they have updated their recipe. Cake flour is different from all purpose flour. Cake flour is all purpose flour plus salt and baking powder. Apparently cake flour is lighter in texture than all purpose flour. A quick google search should help you how to make cake flour as I have never used it. I would say, for every 1 cup of all purpose flour add 1 teaspoon of baking powder and 1/4 tsp of salt.