These are your classic red velvet cupcakes. Super moist, light chocolaty flavor with decadent cream cheese icing. YUM.
Ingredients
2½ cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 oz (1 box) red food coloring
1¼ cups vegetable oil
1½ cups sugar
2 eggs (at room temperature)
1 tbsp vanilla
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp white or apple cider vinegar
½ tsp baking soda
½ cup chocolate chunks
Icing
16 oz cream cheese (2 packages)
½ cup butter
2¾ cups powdered sugar
Dash salt
1 tbsp vanilla
½ tbsp lemon juice
Instructions
Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees F.
Line your cupcake pan with muffin tins (this recipe makes 24 cupcakes)
In a bowl, combine the following ingredients: flour, baking powder, salt, cocoa powder. Sift and set aside.
In a separate bowl, using an electric mixer, combine sugar, oil, eggs (one at a time), vanilla, and red food coloring.
Add ⅓ of your dry ingredients into the red sugar mixture. Mix well. Add ½ of your buttermilk to the red sugar mixture. Mix well. Alternate adding the dry mixture and the buttermilk to the red sugar mixture, ending with the dry.
In a small bowl, combine the vinegar and the baking soda. Let it fizz for a minute and then add it to your red mixture.
Your batter should be a beautiful red color and medium consistency.
Add in the chocolate chunks, stirring by hand.
Fill your muffin tins ½ to ¾ of the way full with your red batter. Some easy ways to do this are to use a mini ice cream scoop or to put some of the batter into a measuring cup and pour into the muffin cups.
Bake in the oven at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes, or until the cupcakes pass the toothpick test.
Let them cool completely before icing them.
To make the icing...
In a large bowl, using an electric mixer cream the butter, cream cheese, powdered sugar, and lemon juice. Mix well until the icing is light and fluffy.
Notes
Decorating tips...
Since I didn't have any of my piping tools with me, I put some icing into a ziplock bag, cut a small hole in the corner of the bag, and piped away! It worked extremely well (as you can see by the beautiful cupcakes!). I also sprinkled some milk chocolate shavings on top of the cupcakes.
Recipe by bake (+travel) with sonia at http://www.bakewithsonia.com/red-velvet-surprise-cupcakes/