Florida Food Lover: Pink Velvet Cupcakes

My friend Tony requested red velvet cake for his birthday, so his fiancée Katie and I made cupcakes for his party last night! I’m not always a fan of red velvet cake, but our family friend Jett has the absolute best family recipe for them!

My parents throw a huge “recipe party” every few years – they invite nearly everyone they know, and their friends all submit recipes. Each guest has to make the dish for the party, and then my mom prints cookbooks with all the recipes and gives awards for best appetizer, salad, entrée, and dessert. The last party had hundreds of guests, but they haven’t thrown one since 2011. Hopefully they’ll be able to host another despite moving from a house into a condo…

Jett’s red velvet cupcake recipe was in the 2011 party cookbook. She said that her Grandmommy Ruth was a prize winning cook who was known for making everything from scratch. The cream cheese frosting on these cupcakes is THE BEST! However, I’m calling mine “pink velvet” cupcakes because I made a big miscalculation in the amount of food coloring we needed. Ours didn’t have the deep red hue, but they still tasted incredible!

Pink Velvet Cupcakes (adapted from Ruth Russell’s Red Velvet Cake recipe)

Ingredients:

· 1 T cocoa

· ¼ oz. red food coloring (the original recipe calls for 3 oz, but I only had one of the tiny containers, so if you’d like the true Red Velvet recipe, make sure you buy the larger container)

· 1 T vinegar

· 1 t vanilla

· 2 cups vegetable oil

· 1¾ cups sugar

· 4 eggs

· 3 cup flour

· 1 t baking soda

· 1 t salt

· 1 cup buttermilk

Directions:

1. Mix the cocoa, red food coloring, vinegar, and vanilla together in a small bowl and set aside.

2. Cream sugar and oil together in a large bowl. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

3. In a medium bowl, sift flour, baking soda, and salt together THREE times and set aside. (It said this is the recipe, so I thought it must be important!)

4. Add the flour mixture into the sugar/oil alternately with the buttermilk, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Gently stir in the vinegar mixture. The batter will be slightly thinner than most cake batters.

5. For cake, pour into 3 - 9” round or square cake pans. Bake at 350 for 25 – 30 minutes.

For cupcakes, fill baking cups with 2/3 full. Bake at 350 for 15-19 minutes. This will make about 30 regular cupcakes. (Sully was watching me fill the cupcakes hoping some ended up on the floor...)