Red Velvet Cupcakes

Another year, another batch of Red Velvet Cupcakes.

Monday is my mother-in-law's birthday and she made a special request- more of those Red Velvet Cupcakes please! I love when people ask me to make something for them, it makes my day! :)

Special cupcake for the birthday girl! This sparkly, gold icing I used drips like crazy, so my 5's look like S's. I won't be buying that anymore. I frosted the big cupcakes by hand for a more rustic look, and then piped the frosting onto the mini-cupcakes. Just for kicks.

I was looking over the post I did on Red Velvet Cupcakes from last year, and I realized that the recipe I posted was for cake, not for cupcakes. That, and the recipe can be simplified. I wouldn't know that if I didn't have a year of baking under my belt! Making these cupcakes today I realized how much I've learned in a year, and how far I've come. Culinary school may have been faster, but I had a lot of fun learning over the last year. No doubt that next year I will have learned even more than I know now.

Ingredients (makes 36 standard cupcakes):
Cupcakes-
3 1/2 cups cake flour
3 tbsp cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs, room temp
2 tsp vanilla extract
6 tbsp red food coloring
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1 1/2 tsp cider vinegar

Frosting-
5 tbsp flour
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine flour through baking soda. Whisk and set aside.
3. In a separate large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Mix in the eggs, one at a time until thoroughly blended. Mix in vanilla. Mix in food coloring.
4. In a small bowl, whisk buttermilk and cider vinegar together. In 3 separate additions, add flour to the butter/sugar mixture, alternating each time with the buttermilk mixture. Mix until the ingredients are well blended and batter is smooth.
5. Line 3 cupcake pans with liners. Fill cups 3/4 way full. Bake in oven 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Mini-cupcakes will bake in 10-12 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool in pan 5 minutes. Remove to a cooling rack, and cool completely before frosting.
6. In a small sauce pan, heat flour and milk until mixture is very thick, like brownie batter. This will take some time, 10-15 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool completely before moving on to next step.
7. Whisk vanilla into flour mixture.
8. Cream butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl until pale and creamy. Add in flour mixture and beat the crap out of it. Seriously, like 10 minutes. The frosting will thicken before your eyes and take on the consistency of whip cream. Cool in fridge 15 minutes, proceed to frost cupcakes.
9. Eat, eat, EAT those cupcakes! Yum!

Just baked cupcakes, pre-frost.

Cupcake recipe adapted from Epicurious.
Frosting recipe courtesy of Tasty Kitchen.