on the side: What is that, Red Velvet?!

I know that one person out there will get the title of this post straight away, and I know that most everyone else will need a little explaining.....you see one of my bestest and dearest friends and I are known to often quote random movie lines, and this is probably one of our favorites. What is that, velvet?...mmhhmm, good and terrible!

Not only am I referencing one of the best movies of all time, but I also made red velvet cupcakes this past weekend. Yes, there was another birthday among mes amis, so of course I had to make something. And this gal loves cupcakes, and it's February, so there was only one very obvious choice staring me smack in the face. Red Velvet!

So, yes, I had never made red velvet cake before. And honestly, I never understood what all the hype was about. I mean, what was the big stinkin' deal about some food coloring in regular ol' cake batter... Well, I am here to tell you that red velvet is not the red headed step child that I thought it was. Red velvet is a-ma-zing. I did some reading on the topic, and found that, as with anything, there are many different ways of making it, and many beliefs on what it should be, what it shouldn't be, and how it originated, to how it gets it's red color. The most interesting was to learn that the original recipe calls for a boiled frosting. Huh!

For my red velvets, I did not go the boiled frosting route, though one of these days I will have to try it. Instead, I did the more modernly traditional cream cheese frosting. And I did find a pretty great recipe for the cake here. I liked this recipe because it seemed to call for less fat than many of the others. The only changes I made to the recipe was that I added some extra cocoa powder as the 3/4 teaspoon just didn't seem enough to me. And I was glad that I did. They had a nice and soft chocolatey flavor. And the only thing I will do differently next time, is to try them with beet juice instead of the red food coloring. Because red food coloring is, like, the devil. But I did love the color of these gems...