Red Velvet Cupcakes

I'm back!! After 3 months of traveling around and spending time with family, I'm finally back at home (I have multiple homes. Yes I'm a nomad.) Which means I can bake again! I did bake a few times when I was in the Philippines but it was all old stuff -- Snickerdoodles, Chocolate Cupcakes, Apple Crisp -- stuff that are already up on this blog.

I had a day to kill before school started so I thought I'd bake some cupcakes. I've tasted some reaaally good red velvet cakes and cupcakes in the past so I wanted to make my own. As with everything else, my favorite part is always the frosting -- cream cheese frosting.. mmm yummy.

These cupcakes turned out a little dry so I'm gonna have to tweak it next time. But anywho, here's the recipe.

Makes 12 medium-sized cupcakes.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

1/4 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 tblspoon red food coloring
1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp vinegar
1 cup flour
2 tblspoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp salt

• Preheat oven to 175˚C.
• Cream together butter and sugar.
  
• Add egg, buttermilk, red food coloring, and vanilla to the mix.
  ** I had no buttermilk so I put 1 tablespoon of vinegar in a mixing cup and filled the rest with milk until the 1-cup mark. Use half of this for the recipe. **

• Mix in baking soda and vinegar to the batter.
• In a separate bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder and salt.
  
• Slowly add the dry ingredients to the other bowl. Mix well.
• Pour batter into cupcake cups until they are half full.
• Place in the oven for 10 minutes.

Cream Cheese Frosting

1/2 of an 8oz. cream cheese block, softened
2 tblspoons butter, softened
1/2 cup icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla

• Cream together cream cheese and butter.
• Add vanilla and mix well.
• Slowly add icing sugar.

** Remember to cool cupcakes completely before adding the icing because it will melt.

Yummy Rating:
♥
(It was a little dry.. and not as red as I wanted it to be.)

Sugar Cookie Lollipops

I was planning to give the cake pops to my boss and co-worker as a goodbye present. But since that did not turn out too well, I had to come up with something else. So I thought of making sugar cookies.. you can't really go wrong with sugar cookies. Got the recipe from The Best Rolled Sugar Cookie. For the frosting, I used Sugar Cookie Frosting.

After I chilled the dough, I had to cut the cookie shapes out. The first few I made were just circles (easy enough). Then I tried to be more creative and cut some 'flower' shapes out with a knife.. the one on the far right turned out okay. The bottom one, not so much (Is there a flower with only 4 petals?). Also made a square. After I did those two, I went back to making circles.. too lazy to make other shapes. Once the shapes were cut out, I stuck the cookie sticks into them. The back of the cookie opened up a little bit so I just got small pieces of dough and covered the sticks at the back. Then I baked them. I was a little worried that the sticks were gonna catch fire but luckily, they didn't. Cooled the cookies for a couple of hours and then decorated them with frosting. I got lazy after a little while so I just made random scribbles on some of them. As you can see from my cookie frosting designs, I'm not a very creative person :p

The final product. My thank you/goodbye present for my boss.

Yummy rating:
♥♥

Vanilla Brown Butter Cupcakes

Recipe from BakingBites.

When I was working at Maxxam (for my first 2 co-op terms), they held a competition to fundraise for the Vancouver Food Bank. All the employees were split into 7 or 8 different teams. At the end, my group came in 3rd place. We raised about $700 (if I remember correctly) by having a pizza lunch, clubbing night, 50/50 draw, and a bunch of bake sales! This was my contribution to one of our bake sales.. I think I sold them for 50cents per cupcake.. cus they were mini ones.

Yummy rating:
♥♥