Recipe--Red Velvet Cupcakes (from scratch!)

I’ve been posting recipes from a church bake sale for the past couple of weeks. One of the things I made was Red Velvet Cupcakes. I had never made them before and wanted to try them out. I found a recipe for Red Velvet Sheet Cake here, but decided to tweak the recipe a bit, and turn them into cupcakes. It worked well!

What really intrigued me about this recipe was the frosting. I had never heard of such a frosting (5 Tablespoons of flour?) But I was amazed at how delicious it was! Apparently, it is the original frosting used on Red Velvet cake. Make sure you try it!

Red Velvet Cupcakes (from scratch!)

1 cup shortening

1 ¾ cup sugar

2 ½ cups cake flour

1 ¼ teaspoon salt

3 eggs

1 cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 ½ teaspoons vinegar

1 ½ ounce, fluid red food coloring

1 ½ teaspoon cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a muffin pan with cupcake papers. Sift together cake flour and salt. Set aside. In a separate bowl, stir together buttermilk, eggs, vanilla, and baking soda. Add vinegar and stir. Set aside. In a separate small bowl, mix together cocoa and red food coloring. Set aside.

Cream together shortening and sugar until fluffy. Alternate adding the flour mixture and the buttermilk/egg mixture until all combined. Pour the red mixture in and beat until combined.

Pour batter into cupcake papers. Fill each cup about ¾ full, because the cupcakes will grow. Make sure you don’t fill them too high or they will grow out of the cups and stick to your pan (speaking from experience. J)

Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean. Cool the cupcakes in the pan for 10 minutes, and then take out and cool on wax paper. Allow cupcakes to cool completely before icing.

Frosting

5 Tablespoons flour

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup butter

1 cup granulated sugar (not powdered sugar)

In a small saucepan, whisk flour into milk and heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens. You want it to be very thick, thicker than cake mix, more like a brownie mix. Remove from heat and let it cool to room temperature. (If you’re in a hurry, place the saucepan over ice in the sink for about 10 minutes or so until the mixture cools.) It must be completely cool before you use it in the next step. Stir in vanilla.

While the mixture is cooling, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. You don't want any sugar graininess left. Then add the completely cooled milk/flour/vanilla mixture and beat it. If it looks separated, you haven't beaten it enough! Beat it until it all combines and resembles whipped cream. Frost cupcakes the same day you are going to serve them. Keep any leftover frosting in the refrigerator.