Red Velvet is a pretty cake! Basically it’s vanilla cake with a hint of chocolate and a tender moist velvety crumb. And of course the rich deep red hue, which gives it the name and makes it look all fancy and exciting.
I recently bought Neeta Mehta’s ‘Cupcakes and Brownies’ and was keen to do a batch of cupcakes in the new oven. The first recipe was red velvets. I have done red velvet cake sometime back where I used home- made cream cheese for the frosting.
This Bombay visit I picked two tubs of cream cheese and tried the frosting from ‘Joy of Baking’. The cupcakes came out moist and delicious. So much so that I had to actually bake a second batch to serve them frosted!
This gorgeous cream cheese frosting, is good enough to die for!
Here is the recipe for the cake (adapted from Neeta’s cook book)
1 1/3 cup (150 grams) APF/Plain flour/Maida
1 tbsp cocoa powder
¼ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp Raspberry Red liquid food colour (add a little more to get the desired shade of red)
1 cup buttermilk (or a mixture of ¾ cup milk and ¼ cup yogurt/curd/dahi)
¼ cup butter, room temperature
1 cup powdered sugar
½ tsp pure vanilla extract
1 egg
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp vinegar
Preheat the oven to 180C/350 F and line a 12 muffin pan with paper liners.
In a medium bowl, sift the flour and whisk with the salt, baking powder and cocoa.
In a large bowl, beat the butter for a minute. Add sugar and beat for another couple of minutes.
Add the vanilla extract and egg and mix till incorporated.
In a bowl add the food colour to the buttermilk.
Now add one thirds of the flour mixture and mix in.
Then half the buttermilk-colour mixture and mix and continue till all the flour is used up, starting and ending with the flour.
Take the vinegar in a small bowl and add in the baking soda. It will bubble. Quickly stir and add to the batter and mix well.
Using a spoon or an ice cream scoop, spoon in the cake batter into the lined muffin pan.
Bake for 20 minutes or till a toothpick inserted into the centre of a cup cake comes out clean.
Transfer to the wire rack and cool completely before frosting.
Cream Cheese Frosting
This, by far, is the best frosting I have ever had. Mildly sweet with a hint of tang, this totally trumps all others in the flavour arena. Or maybe I feel that being a die-hard citrusy dessert lover 😛
The recipe is from Joy of Baking ( with minor changes)
180 grams cream cheese, at room temperature (I used 1 tub of Britannia Processed Cream Cheese)
½ tsp pure vanilla extract
50 grams icing or powdered sugar , sifted
125 millilitres of heavy cream /whipping cream ( I used Rich cream), chilled
Put a steel bowl in the freezer to chill.
Beat the cream cheese till smooth (about 30 seconds).
Add the sugar and vanilla and beat till soft and creamy (2 minutes).
Now get the chilled steel bowl and the chilled heavy cream out of the fridge and beat the cream to stiff peaks. I put it the bowl over a bed of ice because of the afternoon heat and the temperature in high 30s. It helped.
Add the cream cheese mix to the heavy cream and whisk together for half a minute.
It becomes nice, thick and creamy and doesn’t drop easily even if the bowl is inverted.
Fill the piping bag and push all the frosting down till the frosting peaks from the tip of the piping bag.
With a firm and steady hand, make swirls over the cupcakes. Well I am a beginner and a very reluctant ‘froster’ as you can see here 😛 But it did get better by the fourth cupcake 😀
Too lazy to do that? Simply slather all over the cuppies and enjoy country style!
Heaven either ways ❤
And if you have the heart to do it, crumble a cuppie and sprinkle all over the frosted others 😀
Best used the same day, but can be refrigerated for up to two days.
And now 😀
