I’m one of those weirdoes that actually loves Valentine’s Day! I’ve always loved it; boyfriend or not I loved the day full of hearts and red and pink. I just love love and I’m an incurable romantic so V-Day was made for me. One of my favourite sweet treats are red velvet cupcakes and of course it’s perfect for this special occasion.
I use the Georgetown Cupcakes recipe with a couple of minor changes. I love their cream cheese frosting but I find that it’s soupy for me and just not pipeable. I’ve read that part of the problem is not to use spreadable cream cheese, which is an easy fix if you’re in North America. Unfortunately I can’t get block cream cheese in Spain and all you can get here is the spreadable stuff. I found this great post on making stiff cream cheese frosting and I use her technique with my recipe. It makes a very thick, stiff frosting so if you’re looking for a different texture then this is not the recipe for you. I like to pipe my cupcakes with a Wilton 1M tip and you need a stiff icing or else your frosting just falls and becomes a blob.
- 3 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp. salt
- 170 gr./12 Tbsp. unsalted butter (room temperature)
- 1 ¾ cups sugar
- 2 large eggs (room temperature)
- 2 Tbsp. LorAnn’s Red Velvet Emulsion
- 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
- 2 ½ Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder (use a high quality cocoa powder)
- 1 ½ cups whole milk (room temperature)
- 1 ½ tsp. apple cider vinegar
- CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
- 100 gr. unsalted butter (room temperature)
- ½ tsp. pure vanilla extract
- 1/8 tsp. salt
- 3 cups icing sugar
- 170 gr. cream cheese (cold, straight from the fridge)
- Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F. Line a cupcake/muffin pan with cupcake liners.
- Sift the flour and salt together in a medium bowl and set aside.
- In the bowl of your stand mixer, add the butter and start creaming on medium speed and then add the sugar and cream everything together until it becomes light and fluffy (approx. 5 minutes).
- Add the eggs one at a time and mix slowly after each egg until incorporated.
- Add the red velvet emulsion, pure vanilla extract, and the cocoa powder and mix until well incorporated.
- Add one third of the flour and then one third of the milk and mix just until incorporated and repeat these steps ensuring you end with the milk.
- In a small bowl, mix the baking soda and the vinegar together until thoroughly mixed. Add this to the mixture making sure to scrape all the baking soda from the small bowl. Mix this until it’s just incorporated.
- Fill your cupcake liners two thirds of the way. I like to use an ice cream scoop to fill the liners and don’t be tempted to fill them up to the top because you’ll get a funny cupcake top which doesn’t look as nice.
- Bake for 15 to 18 minutes. Make sure to start checking at minute 15 because they go from raw inside to cooked in no time and then check every two minutes or so. Mine took 18 minutes.
- Let stand on a baking rack until cool and remove from the cupcake mold and decorate with the cream cheese frosting.
- Add the butter and vanilla to the bowl of your stand mixer and mix on low (I used speed 2). Slowly add the icing sugar and mix until it’s well incorporated and you have a crumbly, sandy mixture.
- Add the cold cream cheese and mix on the lowest speed for 1 to 2 minutes. You don’t want to over mix at this point because your icing will start to get runny.
- For more info on the cream cheese icing and the technique I used, check out this blog.
Whether you love or hate V-Day make sure to take a bite out of love, a red velvet bite is best! Happy V-Day everyone!!!
I'm MYC on Ravelry.
Catching up on some reading, the cupcakes are incredible. I also like the comment on the Taster’s Choice coffee. Its part of my morning routine, unfortunately without the velvet cupcakes. 🙂 Cindy was so lucky. 🙂
You’ll just have to move to Madrid to become the second LLK official taste tester!!!
You are just amazing and too funny!!! These cupcakes are making me hungry.
BTW, I just read your blog once again and I too am a big fan of instant coffee and “Taster’s Choice” was all I drank until about 1 year ago when I finally bought a new coffee maker…but the truth of the matter is, I still like “Taster’s Choice”.
Don’t ever change and keep up the excellent work.
Thanks! I have a great coffee maker but I will forever be a Taster’s Choice girl and I still drink it every morning and twice on weekends! I’m definitely not a coffee snob!
You are amazing! Mom and dad are real proud of you.
Thanks for linking to my website, glad that you like the frosting! I’m a man by the way 😉
Thanks for the icing tips Mike!
I am such a fortunate soul that I got to eat one of these for valentine’s day. DELICIOUS! Thank you!!!
You are the official LLK taste tester, so naturally you had to try these!