Red velvet cupcakes

Red Velvet cake is one of those things I have always heard about, but did not taste before last fall at a bridal shower. I consider most cakes over here too sweet, but the one I tried was really good. The idea to make some red velvet cupcakes got stuck in my head and when we had a completely unexpected snow day this week, finally the day to make them had arrived. Now you have to understand how I go about something like this, extensive research and reading is required and one thing was blatantly obvious, everybody has their own personal way to do this cake, with the only common component being a ton of red food coloring being used. That was something I definitely wanted to avoid, food dye, especially red is like poison for kids with ADD. Some of the recipes have nothing to do with red velvet cake, outside of being red that is. Some people just make a red vanilla pound cake, atrocious!

Originally the cake got the red color due to a reaction between buttermilk, vinegar, baking soda and the alkaline dutch process cocoa. Cocoa has changed over the years though. I wonder how they colored this cake in the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, where it was very popular in the Twenties. One recipe I found used red beets, but all the other ingredients seemed not as typical. I decided to go my typical route, an amalgamation of many different recipes, plucking a detail here and there which adhered to my sense of baking. The original frosting is a butter roux - a cooked flour frosting - and not cream cheese frosting - yeah, something new to learn :)


So here it goes, my red velvet cupcake recipe:

Roast a couple of red beets in the oven, peel them and puree them with tart cherry juice. This might also work with jarred beets, in which case you might not need the juice, but I have not tried this.

Mix 2 cups of the red beet puree
1 - 2 teaspoons real vanilla extract
1 cup of buttermilk

Sift together:
1.5 cups organic whole grain pastry flour
1 cup regular organic flour
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
2/3 cup of dutch process cocoa

Cream
1 cup of butter
1.5 cups of sugar and then add
3 eggs, one at a time

and then add alternating from the flour mix and the beet mix until the dough is all mixed.

Combine
2 teaspons balsamic vinegar with
2 teaspoons baking soda
which will fizz like crazy and you feel like a weired scientist.
Mix into the dough

fill 24 cupcake liners and bake in a preheated oven of 350 F for about 20 minutes. Now I am not completely sure about the time, just test it with a wooden skewer.

While the cupcakes cool down, make the roux frosting.

While creaming together
3/4 cup of butter with
1/2 cup of sugar and
some vanilla extract

whisk, while heating on the stove
3/4 cup of milk
a pinch of salt
3 tablespoons of flour until thick.
Let the milk and flour paste cool and then mix it slowly into the creamed butter and sugar. Beat for quite a while until it is very creamy and smooth. Frost the cupcakes or if you make a cake instead, fill it. I had made some chocolate decorations (just pipe melted bitter chocolate on a baking mat and then cool) that I stuck into the frosting. I piped the frosting onto the cupcakes, as I think it just gives a nicer finish that applied with a blade. The frosting will firm up very nicely in the fridge.

Everybody really liked these cupcakes, they were moist, not too sweet and had a wonderful chocolate taste. They were not bright red, more like a red tinged devil's food cake, but they were just the right balance in taste and texture. I will definitely have to make them again, and if we make it to the Waldorf during the next holiday season, I will have to try their red velvet cake.