Baked Good of the Month Club: February

After last week's cupcake roundup I was dying for a cupcake, so when Monday rolled around I knew what I would be making. In August I posted a request on facebook for a red velvet recipe and a family friend emailed me her grandmother's recipe.

Red velvet cupcakes? Um...yes please.

PS Did you know that red velvet cupcakes are chocolate cupcakes dyed red?

Ingredients

For the Cupcakes

1/2 cup butter (or I Can't Believe it's Not Butter)

1 1/2 cups sugar (or Splenda)

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour (I once tried to make these with whole wheat flower and it didn't work out very well, stick to cake flour)

1 oz. red food coloring

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup buttermilk

1 tablespoon white vinegar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 20 2 1/2" x 1 1/4" muffin pan cups (I spray the pan, put the cupcake liners in, and then respray the pan)

2. Cream butter & sugar (at this point I'm dying for one of the two KitchenAid mixers we registered for)*

3. Add well beaten eggs.

4. Add cocoa powder and red food coloring.

5. Add salt and buttermilk alternately with the flour. Add vanilla Dissolve soda in vinegar and add last. Blend all ingredients as little as possible.

6. Fill cupcake cups 3/4 of the way full.

7. Bake for 18-25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean (make sure to stick one of the cupcakes in the center of the oven)

8. Let cupcakes cool completely, try to only eat one before they are frosted, but I won't judge you if you eat them all.

Now for the frosting you have two options. The recipe originally comes with a buttercreamish frosting but I made a cream cheese frosting.

For Buttermilk Frosting

Cream 1 cup butter and 1 cup sugar. Cook 5 tablespoons of flour in 1 cup of milk over low heat until very thick. Allow to cool and combine mixtures, add 1 teaspoon vanilla.

For Cream Cheese Frosting (and who doesn't love cream cheese frosting?)

Cream 5 ounces of softened cream cheese with 4 tablespoons of butter, 2 1/2 cup powdered sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

These are pretty tasty, if I don't say so myself. The color is great for Valentine's day, I wanted to top them with some cute toothpick flags but didn't have time to make some so they got some Necco sweethearts instead.

Be sure to stop back by later today, I've got two great guest bloggers scheduled.

*Yes, we registered for 2 KitchenAids. We actually registered for 2 sets of everything, we wanted options! Don't worry, we're going to go back through our registries and cut duplicates.