Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing

Red Velvet seems to be the rage in the last few years. With my boss Sharon Dean's birthday coming up, I decided to give a few recipe variations a whirl before I decided on one that I liked. There's a few parts to making the cake and the key is to keep everything organized. Your butter, eggs and buttermilk need to be kept at room temperature so be sure to leave these out of the fridge. I was worried that the icing would go all runny on me but it stayed great for over 10 hours and likely longer if I didn't run out of cupcakes. Mind you this is Toronto in the winter. I hope she enjoyed them, Happy Birthday Sharon!

This recipe gave me 36 medium size cupcakes, you'd get a few less with the jumbo sized cup.

Cake
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
Vanilla essence

Dissolve and make a paste
2 tbsps sifted cocoa powder
1/2 tsp red food colour gel
50 ml warm water

Sift together
2 1/2 cups cake flour
1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 cup buttermilk

Add at the end
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp white vinegar

Cream the butter and sugar for a few minutes scraping the sides of the bowl at intervals. Add the eggs one by one till fully incorporated. Add Vanilla essence and then the cocoa and red colour mixture. Add some of the flour and alternate with the buttermilk. Add the vinegar to the baking soda and fold into the batter. Fill the cupcake bases no more than 3/4 full and bake in a preheated oven at about 350 degrees. Cool

Cream Cheese icing
8 oz block cheese
1/2 cup butter
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup icing sugar sifted

Blend the cheese and butter. And the vanilla essence and sift the icing sugar the mixture. Mix till incorporated. Pipe onto cooled cupcakes.