Hi guys, today
I'm going to show you how to make red velvet cupcakes, with a lemony cream cheese icing.
These can be spruced up perfectly for the Fourth of July, and
I'm excited to share this recipe with you, because it's a collaboration with my friend Rachel from Kawaii Sweet World,
who's going to take these cupcakes and turn them into some Fourth of July themed red velvet parfaits.
I love Rachel's channel because she takes even the simplest desserts and turns them into these adorable masterpieces.
So I'm going to hand it over to her and let her tell you a little bit more about her channel.
Hey, Vatika! On my channel,
I make all sorts of cute or kawaii desserts because kawaii is the Japanese word for cute.
And it's things kind of like the Hello Kitty mason jar cakes that we are making today.
So you can click the link to our video in the description box or at the end of the video,
but if you're interested in learning how to make red velvet
cupcakes, just keep watching. In a bowl cream, together a quarter cup of soft, unsalted butter at room temperature,
with 3/4 of a cup of granulated sugar.
Then add one whole egg, followed by a teaspoon of good quality vanilla
extract, and just continue to beat until the mixture is a nice pale golden color. At that stage,
you're going to add two and a half tablespoons of dark, unsweetened cocoa powder.
It will resemble more of a chocolate cake batter than a red velvet cake, but fear not, just trust me.
Now for the ingredient that makes or breaks red velvet cake: food coloring.
I'm adding in two tablespoons of gel paste food coloring,
and I use this kind because it has a much higher concentration
of color, so you'll end up with a nice bright red a lot sooner.
I'll have essential red velvet cake details on my blog, which is listed down below,
but now you're going to add half a teaspoon of salt.
At this stage don't be afraid to give it a thorough mixing, because you're going to make for a lighter and fluffier cupcake.
To make these cupcakes moist, you're going to add in half a cup of buttermilk,
but if you don't have that on hand, you can use half a cup of milk mixed, with a teaspoon of vinegar.
You're going to alternate the buttermilk with a cup and 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour.
You're going to start out with the buttermilk and end with the flour, and I do this in about three batches.
Over-mixing the flour in cakes and cupcakes is fatal, so just don't do it. Now add half a teaspoon of baking soda.
Make sure the baking soda isn't clumpy because you don't want people biting into the cupcake only to leave with a bitter
taste of baking soda.
Next add half a tablespoon of vinegar,
and you should know from science class that when baking soda and vinegar come in contact with each other, there is a
reaction, and this reaction causes the cupcakes to rise.
When the batter is nice, thick, and lava-like, you're going to scoop up mounds of the batter and plop them into your prepared
cupcake liners.
You're going to pop the tray into a preheated 350 Fahrenheit
or 180 degrees Celsius oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. In the meantime,
we're going to make our cream cheese icing, for which you're going to combine a quarter cup of soft butter
with 8 ounces or around 200 grams of cream cheese.
Just whisk those ingredients together until they are nice, fluffy, and smooth.
It's important to use room-temperature cream cheese,
otherwise you'll end up with a lumpy mixture. Now add in a teaspoon of vanilla extract and continue to blend.
When the mixture is thick and creamy, you're going to add a cup of confectioner's sugar.
It's important to remember that with cream cheese icing the more sugar you add, the thinner the icing gets,
so the cup is just right for a nice soft beat.
And
finally, I always like to add a splash of lemon juice because I think that it balances the sweetness of the icing perfectly, and it
complements the cream cheese really well. You are ready to frost some cupcakes.
So I'm just going to pour the icing into a Ziploc bag or a piping bag with the end snipped off. You can also just
spread the icing atop the cupcakes using a knife.
So I think these look a lot more elegant when the paper's peeled off,
so I'm just going to peel off all those liners,
and then you're ready to frost.
So to frost the cupcakes using the piping bag, just place it at the center of the cupcake and squeeze out, spreading
slightly, to create a nice dollop. For a Fourth of July finish,
I like to top these off with some blue colored sugar to create red white and blue. You can actually color the sugar at home,
and I have instructions on how to do that on the blog.
My favorite way of decorating is
crumbling up a cupcake and sprinkling some of it atop the dollop of icing, and that's sort of a homemade and slightly fancier touch.
And now for the moment we've been working so devotedly towards, the tasting! Texture-wise, these cupcakes are soft, fluffy,
they have a very tender crumb. Taste-wise, that small hint of chocolate has such a big impact on the
overall cupcake, and I couldn't imagine eating it without the cream-cheese icing. It's obvious why this cupcake is such a huge phenomenon.
Thank you guys so much for watching!
I hope you enjoyed learning how to make red velvet cupcakes and that you make them for this Fourth of July.
Subscribe for more recipes like this! And now I'm going to take this cupcake and hand it over to Rachel.
And she's going to turn them into those gorgeous parfaits. You can check out her video,
the link will be somewhere up here, or in the description box down below.
Thank you guys once again for watching and I will see you next time. Bye bye!
