Sounds good.

Thanks.

My daughter loves them and her favorite is this recipe from Ina Garten. This recipe has 12 ingredients, as opposed to the 6 in the cake mix recipe, but it's not really much more work. I admit that the frosting is my weakness, something about all that butter and cream cheese!

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Yield: 15 cupcakes

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 cup buttermilk, shaken

1 tablespoon liquid red food coloring

1 teaspoon white vinegar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 extra-large eggs, at room temperature

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line
muffin tins with paper liners.
In a small bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa
powder, baking powder, baking soda, and
salt. In a large measuring cup, combine the
buttermilk, food coloring, vinegar, and
vanilla.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and
sugar on medium speed for 1 minute, until light. Add the eggs, one at a time, and
beat until combined. With the mixer on low speed, add the dry ingredients and the
wet ingredients alternately in 3 parts, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients,
and mix until combined. Stir with a rubber spatula to be sure the batter is mixed.
Scoop the batter into the muffin cups with a 2 1/4-inch ice cream scoop or large
spoon. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the centers comes out
clean. Cool completely in the pans and frost the cupcakes with Red Velvet Frosting.

Red Velvet Frosting

8 ounces cream cheese, softened at room temperature

12 Tbls Butter, softened at room temperature

3 1/2 cups sifted confectioner's (powdered) sugar

1 tsp vanilla

Place the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with
the paddle attachment, and mix on medium speed just until combined. Don't whip!
Add the sugar and mix until smooth.

Annie

Can someone explain the attraction of/to Red Velvet over say, devil's food cake? I can't see any difference to most recipes for a chocolate cake except the food coloring, which I avoid as much as possible. I've eaten Red Velvet before but can't distinguish anything unique about its flavor. What am I missing?

King Arthur sells "Red Velvet flavoring" in their catalog. Without any cocoa or chocolate in it. I've always wondered what red tastes like!

Olychick, velvet cakes of any flavor or color have a specific texture and crumb. A lot of "red velvet" recipes nowadays aren't really velvet cakes and are just red. Devil's food, I think, is more of a standard butter cake (what some people call "pound cake", though it's not fourths or egg rising). Devil's food and red velvet are both get their names from back when cocoa wasn't processed in a way that changed its color. The red wasn't blood red like current versions, but reddish brown from the cocoa.

Sushipup, That Lorann stuff is a flavoring agent, as well as coloring, but it's all nasty chemicals. Real red velvet cake has a very subtle flavor. People are so used to stronger flavors from industrial perfumes, that home bakers are buying them to punch things up.

Has anyone made it with beets instead of food coloring? If so, do the beets alter the flavour? My DH loves red velvet cake, but doesn't like beets. I'm wondering if I can trick him. :)

I think red velvet is not as chocolaty as devils food cake.

Olychick, I don't think you're missing anything. To me, red velvet seems like a chocolate cake wannabe, not enough cocoa to really be chocolate. It's really pretty at Christmas and Valentine's Day, though, if you can stand the thought of all that dye...

As Plllog mentioned, the texture is meant to be a factor, that's why it's "velvet", but with today's proliferation of cake mixes, the red velvet has become just another kind of cake mix cake, in a different color but with the same fluffy/puffy texture as all other boxed mix cakes. It's why the technique in the scratch cake requires those various steps as well as the buttermilk and vinegar in addition to the leavening, for the texture and structure of that specific cake.

Sherri, I have not tried it with beets, but I'm going to, now that you've mentioned it. I've been meaning to for some time now and just haven't gotten around to it. Let us know if you do it and how it comes out, if it's horrible you can save me an experiment!

Annie

I've made one with real red cocoa. It was a lovely cake. Velvet cakes are. And reddish, rather than bloody. As Annie said, it doesn't have the intensity of a dark chocolate cake. That's probably why the chemical flavor/color. People want their socks knocked off nowadays.

I've made a chocolate cake with beets....and the beet hater in the crowd could taste it. I think it would be obvious in a cake with a lesser amount of chocolate.
Red velvet cake has been around for a long time. I think the frosting is the best part....and I don't eat anything with an intense artificial color....no blue icing...no kelly green frosting leaves

I much prefer the classic Red Velvet Cake frosting (the Boiled Milk or Ermine frosting) to cream cheese frosting. It's a little more work and you'll have more pans to wash but so worth it, IMO.

The recipe is also known as Waldorf Astoria Frosting.

Cook until thick, stirring constantly:

1 c. milk

3 T. flour

Set aside to let cool. Meanwhile,

Cream together until light & fluffy the following ingredients:

1 c. oleo (I use butter)

1 c. sugar

1 T. vanilla

Combine the cooked roux w/ the creamed butter & sugar & beat until fluffy.

(There are a lot of very similar recipes all across the web...'Roux Frosting', 'Boiled Milk', 'Red Velvet Cake Frosting', etc.)

*Edited to delete bum NYTimes recipe link and to post the recipe that I use.

I'll let you know if I try one with beets. I've made and liked the ermine icing that ci_lantro linked, but DH did not. I suspect it wasn't sweet enough for him. I'll definitely try the cupcake recipes above too. I've used the NYTimes recipe a few times but it didn't rise as much I expected. Is that because there is baking soda but no baking powder?