I finally figured it out to a standard I’m happy with.

When I made these cupcakes for the first time I used liquid food colouring. After that, I had the Wilton gel and used that for a few times. I was still getting the bright pinky colour and was scratching my head. Gel colouring is great for colouring fondant but not really in baking.

After a bit of research and the last post where I was voicing my concerns for the loss of the red cake, I have worked it out.

Red Velvet Cupcakes (makes 12 large or 18 mini)

Ingredients

• 1 cup Self-Raising Flour
• 115g unsalted butter (also known as roughly one stick of butter)
• 1/3 cup Caster Sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon cocoa
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• cochineal and red liquid food colouring

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 175C (160C for fan forced). This is also the point where I remind you that having an oven thermometer is one of the greatest things you can do for your baking!
2. Beat butter until fluffy. Add sugar and vanilla and mix until all combined.
3. Add eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition.
4. In a seperate cup, measure out the buttermilk and add cochineal and red food colouring until you have a bright red. Only add a little bit at a time to see the colour start to come through. Mix it through with a small whisk, as buttermilk is thicker than normal milk. (FYI, cochineal is a dark purpley-red colour, so you’ll want to add that first, mix, and follow with red).
5. Sift flour and cocoa and add half into the mixture with half of your red buttermilk. You should get a red that’s not too fluroescent and not too light, thanks to the cocoa and cochineal colours. Add the other halves and mix until combined but don’t overmix.
6. If you’re not happy with the colour here, add a little bit more red/cochineal colouring. Don’t add anymore cocoa to try and get it darker or it will go more of a brown than a red. For reference, I don’t use any more than a teaspoon of cochineal and a tablespoon of red.
7. Spoon it into your baking cases and bake for 15-20 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Check at the 15 minute mark. If you leave them in too long, they will brown on the top and contrast with the red of the cake.

It always seems they’re not quite done when you poke a skewer in and it comes out clean, but the top springs back a lot. Believe in the skewer – and point it in on an angle if you’re unsure to double check. And don’t delay – they really do start turning brown quickly and you want them as spongy and red as you can get.

Leave them to cool completely before you store them anywhere or the cases will peel away from the cupcakes (due to humidity in cooling).

Cream Cheese Frosting

• 225g Philadelphia cream cheese (cold)
• 110g unsalted butter (close to room temperature, but not too melty)
• 3-4 cups sifted pure icing sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon milk (only if really needed)

1. Beat the butter until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and icing sugar one cup at a time. I say 3-4 cups because it depends on how the butter responds, especially what temperature it is at.
2. When the sugar and butter are all combined and it’s a huge gluggy mess your mixer is having trouble with, throw in the cream cheese (chopped). It should mix through straight away.
3. Mix until *just* combined and taste test – if it tastes like all the ingredients it’s done. If it tastes too cream cheese or butter mix some more until it’s all combined.

The key to this is not to overmix it – as much as you want to! You should have a nice thick sweet tasting frosting with that cream cheese kick. If it’s too thick to pipe, leave it for 3-4 minutes covered in cling wrap or add a tiny bit of milk. If you add too much it’ll go runny beyond repair so be veeery careful with adding liquids at the end.

As a little extra, the hearts in the picture are just white fondant, coloured with Wilton red gel colouring, and cut out with a tiny heart cutter I have for just that. I only use the 1M Wilton tip for piping as it’s the best icecream swirl there is.

I delivered a lot of orders for Cupcake Treats for this, as it was my Valentines special – and they are all amazingly perfect and taste delicious. I had some left over and my housemates loved them (so did all of my clients)!

I have been baking chocolate cupcakes a lot lately and have noticed they are a little drier than usual. I think it might be due to the weather, so I am going to start adding a little bit more butter each time to see if I can get an even balance for the seasons. We have extremes of 41 degrees for four days in Summer (one year we had 14 days of over 35) to 1 degree nights and 10 degree days in Winter.

All this considered, I decided to make a batch of double chocolate this morning. It was going to be triple chocolate but I ran out of chocolate!

Double Choc Cupcakes

Ingredients:

• 120g butter (Normally it’s 100-110, but I am trying more as the weather is affecting them)
• 2/3 cup caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup self raising flour
• 1/3 cup cocoa
• ½ cup milk

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180ºC or 160ºC fan forced. This is where the oven thermometer comes in handy!
2. Cream butter, sugar and vanilla until all combined. Add eggs one by one and mix until just mixed through.
3. In a seperate bowl, sift the Self Raising flour and cocoa. Add to the mixture with milk. Stir until just combined.
4. Spoon into cupcake cases and bake for 15-20 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

Genache Frosting

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup Thickened Cream
• 200g Dark Chocolate (You can use milk chocolate if you like, I used a combination of both as I was running low)

Method:

1. Break the cooking chocolate into pieces and put aside in a bowl that will be large enough to hold the chocolate and cream.
2. Put the cream into a small saucepan and stir over medium heat. Bring to the boil.
3. Pour the cream over the chocolate in the bowl and stir until chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth. This may take up to five minutes before everything melts through.
4. Leave the bowl to cool down and then place in the fridge until cold, but not solid. If you’re in doubt about whether it is ready to use, take the bowl out and mix thoroughly with a large spoon. If it holds when you tip the bowl onto its side (and doesn’t move) it’s ready.

If you’re piping it with a plastic piping bag, be careful – if the grenache is too thick you will split the piping bag for sure. You can always leave the bowl on your kitchen bench for five minutes and try to pipe it again.

These tasted magnificent! Happy baking xx

This is the very first cupcake recipe I used when I started making them from scratch at the end of last year. Before that I baked mainly cakes and puddings. They’re my absolute favourite and also the easiest to make! You can’t mess up the icing part because you don’t have to be an expert at piping (as the wings stand in the icing). These are my second most popular after the Oreo cupcakes, mainly because I only used to make these and nothing else. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 100g butter, softened
• 2/3 cup caster sugar
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 160C.
2. Lightly beat the eggs, add the butter, vanilla and sugar and mix until light and fluffy.
3. Add half the flour and milk and mix until just combined, then repeat with the remaining half.
4. Line a cupcake pan with paper cases. This recipe can make up to 18, even though it actually says 12!
5. Fill the cases to just above half and put in the oven for 15-20 minutes. Test if they are ready when a skewer comes out clean.

And now for the butterfly part!

Buttercream Ingredients:

• 1 cup icing sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 1 cup butter, room temperature

Buttercream Method:

1. Mix all ingredients until well combined. It should be a light and fluffy texture. Add more icing sugar if it is too runny or if the butter taste is still very strong.
2. Place mixture into a piping bag/gun and set aside.
3. Using a sharp knife, cut a circle into the top of each cupcake. You can do this from a downwards sloping angle so it creates a crater. Take the top off but don’t throw it away, this will become the wings!
4. Pipe the centre with icing. Cut the top in half and place it into the icing standing upright as wings.
5. Dust with icing sugar.

This recipe isn’t as impressive as the jelly slice one I posted recently, but hey, these are definitely a different taste to a regular cupcake!

A bit of background: I LOVE STICKY DATE PUDDING. When I was 11, I did some catering work with my Mum up in the Barossa, and we were serving a lunch and dessert combo at a wine event. It was.. some mignon thing, and the greatest sticky date pudding I’ve ever had in my life. Since then, I’ve been unable to find one the same. It was just magnificent. Maybe one day I’ll be able to recreate that delicious flavour… *sighs*

But we’re talking cupcakes here not puddings! But.. The reason these are sticky maple and not sticky date is that… uhh.. I didn’t really feel like using dates. I found this recipe that included real maple syrup and wanted to give it a go, as I thought it would be a really interesting flavour.

Ingredients:

• 50g Butter
• 100g Brown Sugar
• 3 Eggs
• 2 tbsp Maple Syrup (if you can, try to use real maple syrup)
• 150g Self-Raising Flour

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 160C and line your cupcake tin with 12 cases.
2. Cream butter and sugar, add maple syrup.
3. Add 2 lightly beaten eggs until just combined (don’t overmix)
4. Add in the flour a little bit at a time. If the mix is too thick, add the third egg and mix through.
5. Spoon into the cases and bake for 15-20 minutes. Use a skewer or piece of spaghetti to see if it’s ready, as if you press the top it will feel like it’s not done. If the skewer comes out clean, take them out!
6. Put somewhere to cool and enjoy.

Now as you can see from the picture I didn’t decorate it (I actually ran out of energy this day, we made three different lots and it was hot), but here’s the recipe I would have used. Note that this IS a syrup like the sticky date puddings have, so if you want this to be easy to eat at a party/something, you might want to do it in a smaller quantity and drizzle over the top lightly.

Syrup Ingredients

• 3/4 cup Brown Sugar (sorry about the change in measurements, I know the actual recipe is in grams!)
• 2 tbsp melted butter
• 1/4 cup boiling water

Syrup Method:

1. Combine all ingredients until melted/mixed and microwave for a minute or so. It should be a slightly thin liquid mixture. If you let it sit for a little while it should turn into a thick syrup, but don’t let it cool down too much.
2. Poke a few holes with skewers in the top of each cupcake and use a teaspoon to drizzle the mix down into the cupcake. Each cupcake should have about 3 teaspoons worth.

Finally, to decorate, whip up some cream and pipe a small swirl on the top, and drizzle a little bit of cooled syrup over the cream. You can skip the above step and just do this one if you don’t want the potential mess. Ready to serve, yum!