I have many guilty pleasures.  One of which is fluff TV.  I love a quiet Saturday afternoon at home with a big cup of tea, snuggled in blanket and watching a whole lotta Slice and Food TV.  Project Runway, The Real Housewives of …(insert American City), Top Chef or (and here is where I am really guilty of crap TV) any of the Tori and Dean shows.  I don’t know why it is I like these two.  Maybe it is because I grew up watching 90210, so I have a small affinity with Tori Spelling.  Truthfully though I never really loved Donna Martin on the show… but now, I enjoy watching her over the top party planning, ridiculously dramatic in love relationship with Dean and her love affair with her two kids.
A few weeks back a colleague asked me to do her a favour and bring Red Velvet cupcakes into work for a staff retreat.  I had never made them but was more than happy to take a stab at them!  In fact, I knew exactly what recipe I wanted to try: Tori’s recipe from one of their shows.  I know, really, what was I thinking?  I mean, I could have chosen one of any number of outstanding options from a real chefs/bakers or of course fantastic bloggers.  But no, I felt the need to try a totally random recipe, one that I couldn’t guarantee would taste very good, nor would I test them before feeding them to my colleagues.

So here they are…and they were great.  I only used half the amount of food colouring, otherwise it would have been 4 of those little mini bottles - how crazy is that?  They were a little brown on the outside,  as you can tell from the photo, but once you crack them open, they were bright red…just like they were meant to be.  The kicker, as always in my opinion… the cream cheese icing. Yum!  I thought they were wonderfully festive.  You could top with red and green sprinkles and voila, a great Christmas treat.

Cupcake Ingredients
5 cup all purpose flour

1 cup unsalted butter softened

3  cup sugar

2 teaspoon salt

4 eggs

5 tablespoons cocoa powder

2 ounces red food coloring

2 cups buttermilk

2 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoon white vinegar

4 ounces water

Cream Cheese Frosting
1  (8oz) package cream cheese

1/2  cup unsalted butter

2 cup powdered sugar

2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions
Pre heat oven to 350
Grease 12 cupcake cups or line with paper liners
Cream softened butter and sugar together till fluffy
Add eggs and blend well
In separate small bowl combine cocoa and food coloring and stir. Once you have thick paste then add to mixture.
Sift salt and flour together into mixture
Add vanilla, buttermilk, and water to mixture
In separate small bowl combine vinegar and baking soda. Fold into cake mixture
Pour mixture into cupcake cups.
Bake 15 to 20 minutes or until a wood toothpick inserted into middle of cupcake comes out clean.
Let cool for 10 minutes. Then turn out onto rack and let finish cooling.

Frosting
Blend together cream cheese softened and butter softened.
Add powder sugar and vanilla extract
Blend till smooth

Tags: christmas cupcakes with cream cheese icing, guest blogger: bakergirl creations

This entry was posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 6:03 pm and is filed under guest blogger: bakergirl creations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.