My first red velvet cupcakes

Let the frosting begin…

Last night I made my very first batch of red velvet cupcakes from the extremely popular Hummingbird Bakery recipe. I had made a batch of red velvet whoopie pies in the past which didn’t go brilliantly so I was a bit nervous but determined to proceed.

I’m making the cupcakes for a cake club we have at work – Cake Thursday to give it it’s actual name! I had considered making my friend Kerry’s Rainbow Cake but as there are almost 20 people in our cake club now – I needed something that would go far so cupcakes it was.

Red Velvet Cupcakes out of the oven

After a few difficult decisions regarding doubling the quantities (how do you double 2 large eggs when you only have medium? I went for 5 and it seemed to work pretty well) I was pretty pleased with how the sponge worked out. I then managed to persuade Kerry to come round and help me with frosting with the promise of cake and tea. I haven’t got a brilliant track record with cream cheese frosting but this seems to have worked out well. I’m actually really proud of them.

Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese frosting

They certainly passed the Kerry and Nial test but will they pass the Cake Thursday test? Only time will tell…

Where can I find the recipe?

Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days

I used the recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days book which you can pick up quite cheap now (it’s only £4.99 from The Book People) but the recipe is also available in the first Hummingbird Bakery book and on various different websites. Again my lovely friend Kerry posted about using the recipe on her blog.

Hints and tips

I doubled the standard recipe which gave me A LOT of mixture – I easily made 30 cupcakes but only needed the standard frosting quantity. Thankfully I was persuaded to not make a double batch of this!

In all the Hummingbird recipe books it advises to use the Dr Oetker red food colouring but please note this has now been discontinued. I followed Kerry’s advice, well public service announcement really, and used lots of the Sugarflair Christmas Red which worked perfectly. I do have the new Dr Oetker gel in so I might have to try this and see what the effect is but some natural colours can produce brown cupcakes rather than red. Has anyone else used the gel or other colourings?

About these ads