**Red Velvet Cupcakes**

Recipe taken from Allrecipes.com

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 fluid ounce red food coloring
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (best to not use dutch process cocoa with this. I can never find that, so I just used what I had, but this is a good thing to keep in mind. Non-dutch-process plus the vinegar help with the colour… apparently)
• 1 teaspoon salt

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
Grease two 12 cup muffin pans or line with 20 paper baking cups. (for me, these made 12 cupcakes, although they may have been considered rather big cupcakes but I don’t think they were.)

In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.
Mix in the eggs, buttermilk, red food coloring and vanilla. (probably best to do this one ingredient at a time. I take things very literally, so I just DUMPED it all in because that’s what it says! I don’t know if the finaly product suffered at all because I’ve never had these before)
Stir in the baking soda and vinegar.
Combine the flour, cocoa powder and salt; stir into the batter just until blended.
Spoon the batter into the prepared cups, dividing evenly.

Bake in the preheated oven until the tops spring back when lightly pressed, 20 to 25 minutes.
Cool in the pan set over a wire rack.
When cool, arrange the cupcakes on a serving platter and frost with desired frosting.

**This mixture is VERY RED. It is a LOT of red food dye. Apparently it stains but I had no issues with this. I wore a white tshirt and jeans, both of which I WANTED to get messy [so I could throw the tshirt out, and because it would add to the awesomeness of my jeans] but I got next to nothing on my clothes. The food dye by itself stained my fingertip for a few hours, and stained the white countertop for a day or so. Once mixed into the batter, I got it ALL OVER the bench and all over my bare arms but it wiped off no issue at all. I got 2 drops on my white tshirt but they washed out with no issue. Probably because I wanted the stain**

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz. cream cheese (1 package), softened
1/4 cup unsalted butter (half stick), softened
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
small pinch of salt

With an electric mixer, blend together cream cheese and butter until smooth. 
Turn mixer to low speed and blend in powdered sugar, salt and vanilla extract. 
Turn mixer on high and beat until light and fluffy.
Use immediately or refrigerate, covered, until ready to use. 
If refrigerated, the frosting will need to be brought to room temperature before using (after frosting softens up, beat with mixer until smooth).

**I had issues with the cupcakes sticking in my well-lubed, non-stick silicone baking pan. Easiest way to remove them was to cut the tops off and then the base could be easily removed with a knife run around the edges. This also provided a much prettier way to ice the cupcakes, much less messy in the long run too!

For my 12 cupcakes, I only used half the frosting. Easily adjustable recipe though.

These cupcakes tasted like regular plain cake, with a slight hint of cocoa. I’m not fond of ‘dry’ cake, so I didn’t like it very much, but there were rave reviews from everyone else that tried them. Plus, they are absolutely beautiful to look at!**