Fall Flower Cupcakes (Red Velvet with Cream Cheese Frosting)
A delicious red velvet recipe, adapted from the iconic Bubble Room Red Velvet cake in Sanibel, Florida.
Servings 24
Ingredients
Cupcakes
- 3 3/4 cup self-rising flour
- 2 1/4 cup white sugar
- 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 3 eggs
- 1 1/2 tsp cocoa
- 2 tsp vanilla bean paste
- 1 1/2 tsp white vinegar
- 2 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1 1/2 cup buttermilk
- light 1 tsp red food coloring GEL
Frosting
- 16 oz cream cheese softened
- 1 1/2 cup butter softened
- 2 lb powdered sugar
- 5-10 drops spiced cherry bitters
Instructions
Cupcakes
- Sift the dry cupcake ingredients together in a medium-sized bowl. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, vinegar, oil, buttermilk, vanilla, and food coloring gel until combined. You can use a handheld or stand mixer.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir with a spatula until combined, being careful not to over mix.
- Spoon the batter into your lined cupcake pans. I like to use an ice cream scooper or a measuring cup to keep the scoops even and neat.
- Bake at 350 F degrees for about 15-20 minutes, checking that a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out mostly clean.
- Let cupcakes cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes, and then transfer to a wire rack in order to fully come to room temperature, before beginning to frost.
Cream Cheese Frosting
- Beat the cream cheese and butter together until it is combined and light.
- Then, adding a cup or two at a time, beat in the powdered sugar. Scrape the sides down every few minutes to ensure proper mixing.
- Finally, add 3-5 drops of the spiced cherry bitters. Taste test first, and then add more if you'd prefer.
- Split the frosting into four bowls for coloring, three with a large quantity and one bowl with only a little.
- Color the frosting in the bowls as follows: red, orange (red+yellow), yellow, and, in the small amount of frosting, dark brown (red+yellow+black). Always start light with the colors, adding more if necessary. I like to dip the tip of a toothpick in the food coloring gel, and just dab that into the frosting. This is especially important with a potent color like black, where even one drop would be too much.
- Insert your rosette piping tip into your first piping bag and snip off the plastic end. Fill this bag side by side with orange and red frosting. Starting from the center and moving out, pipe large and/or small rosettes on the cupcakes.
- In your second piping bag, insert the coupler. Then, snip off the bag's plastic tip and attach your leaf tip. Put your yellow frosting in the bag and, with the pointy part of the tip facing upwards, create your "sunflower petals."
- Then, squeeze out any excess yellow frosting and add brown to the same bag. Utilizing the coupler, swap out the leaf tip for the grass tip. Use this texture to fill in the center of the sunflowers.
- Finally, and totally optionally, sprinkle some gold glitter onto the red/orange flowers.
- Make sure to refrigerate these cupcakes until serving time as the cream cheese frosting needs to stay cool. It's not a super stable frosting, so your flowers won't have too much definition, but they're pretty and, most importantly, taste fabulous!
Notes
- Make sure all of your refrigerated ingredients for the cupcake batter are room-temperature before beginning baking. This will ensure smooth emulsification when combining the batter.
- Your cream cheese and butter for the frosting need to be room temperature before beating together. I like to let both ingredients sit out on the counter while baking the cupcakes, since it will take some time for them to warm up.
- These cupcakes must remain refrigerated once frosted, since the icing contains cream cheese. To keep them fresher before frosting, let them cool completely, then store them in an airtight container at room temperature.
- CAKE INSTRUCTIONS: Use 3, 8- or 9-inch cake pans. Butter the pans and line them with parchment paper circles. Portion the batter evenly between the pans and bake. Start testing for doneness with a toothpick around the 35-minute mark. However, depending on the size pan you use, the total bake time will vary. Don't overbake.