Red Velvet Cupcake

Red Velvet cupcake is among the most used theme celebration cakes that I have come across, be it for the color theme of the national flag or the theme for a festival, eg. Christmas and Valentine’s Day.

These red velvet cupcakes are yummy yet quick and easy to bake, just add a little highlight on the frosting and decorations, they will be served according to the colors of the country’s flag.

Today, I decorated my red velvet cupcakes with 2-tone cream cheese frosting: white (cream) and blue – to give a red/white/ blue color theme and these cakes are just in time for the upcoming Independence Day of the United States which falls on 4th of July.

I am using a popular red velvet cake pre-mix for this since I love the texture it gave and the ease of preparing. However, I find it has a less chocolaty taste that a red velvet cake should have. Mandy, my baking buddy, tried a red velvet recipe before and it is prepared from scratch, if you would like to have more chocolaty flavor, you may try this recipe. If you opt for quick and easy baking, continue here for the details.

Hope you have wonderful baking! I am returning to my sewing room for a new cutie pie sewing project to complete, will share the pattern and tutorial as soon as it is completed.

Red Velvet Cupcake With 2-Tone Frosting

Makes 20-24 Cupcakes | Prep Time: 20 minutes| Bake Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:
Cake
Red Velvet Cake Mix from Duncan Hines (buy it online)
3 Large Eggs
1 Cup Water
1/3 Cup Vegetable Oil

Cream Cheese Frosting (adapted from All Recipe)
8 oz. Cream Cheese – Kraft Philadelphia
2 Cups Powdered Sugar / Confectioner’s Sugar / Icing Sugar
1/4 Cup Butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Sky Blue Icing Gel, Wilton

Others
Electrical hand mixer
Muffin or cupcake pan
Red cupcake paper liners
Icing tip of your choice
2 small icing bags
1 large icing bags
Frosting decoration

Method:

Cake
1. Combine and blend cake mix, water, oil and eggs in a large bowl at low speed until moistened (about 30 seconds).

2. Beat at medium speed for 2 minutes.

3. Pour batter into muffin or cupcake pan with cupcake liners in it.

4. Bake immediately in a preheated oven at 325F for 20 minutes or as per instruction from the cake mix.

5. Cool in pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Cool completely before frosting

Cream Cheese Frosting
1. In a medium bowl, cream together the cream cheese and butter until creamy. Mix in the vanilla, then gradually stir in the confectioners’ sugar. Don’t overbeat, the frosting will become runny the more your stir and beat.

2. Split the frosting to 2 equal parts. Add a few drops of Sky Blue Icing Gel into one of the cream cheese frostings, stir to mix well, add more to get your desired tone. If the color can’t mix well, put the frosting back to the refrigerator to harden it.

3. Scoop the frosting into 2 small pipe bag respectively.

4. Read below tutorial (the last step by step photo) on how to pipe a tone swirl frosting.

Cook’s Note:

1. Cream cheese frosting softened very fast at warm room temperature. If the cream cheese softened before or during the icing process, put it back to the refrigerator for 5 to 10 minutes to chill it.

2. Decorate the frosting just before serving the cupcake. Otherwise, keep them in the refrigerator immediately after frosting and serve directly from the refrigerator.

The steps of preparing the red velvet cake batter, bake and cool down. (Read above instruction for the details.)

Preparing cream cheese frosting. (Read above instruction for the details.)

Install the icing tip into a large piping bag.
Clip the tip-off from the small icing bag which has a cream color and blue color cream cheese frosting in it respectively.
Insert the small icing bags into the large icing bag, place them near to the icing tip.
Press some frosting out until you get a consistent flow of 2-tone color.
Decorate your cupcakes.