Easy Red Velvet Cupcake recipe (2024)

FAQs

Why do you put vinegar in red velvet cake? ›

When bakers added vinegar, baking soda, or buttermilk to their recipes to tenderize the cakes, the acid in those ingredients reacted with the cocoa, which was not Dutch-processed, to give the cakes a red tint. That color became a signature of velvet cakes.

While Chocolate Cake is made primarily with cocoa powder and sometimes melted chocolate, Red Velvet Cake is made with a small amount of cocoa powder, but is also known for its signature bright red color, which is usually achieved by adding red food coloring to the batter.

Red velvet cupcakes have a lightly flavored chocolate cake batter that's both moist and beautiful and made with simple ingredients. Red velvet combines cocoa powder and buttermilk for a distinctive taste that balances sweetness with the tang of buttermilk and rich cream cheese frosting.

Issue: Overmixing the batter can incorporate too much air, leading to a flat cake. Solution: Mix the ingredients just until they are combined. Overmixing, especially once the flour is added, can lead to a dense and flat texture.

Apple cider vinegar and white vinegar make good substitutes for one another in most cooking applications, but the former is significantly more tart. In many cases, you can also use these vinegars as substitutes for other types of vinegar.

Key Components. Bicarbonate of soda works by reacting to acid in the recipe – the rising comes from the mix of bicarbonate, buttermilk and vinegar. I always use a white vinegar for my red velvet cupcakes, but others can work such as apple cider vinegar.

Unhealthiest: Carrot Cake

Carrot cake does contain healthy ingredients, such as carrots and nuts, but it is also loaded with fat and sugar. Depending on the size of the cake, your piece could be anywhere between 300-600 calories.

The flavor of blue velvet cake is the same as a red velvet cake—fluffy vanilla cake with a hint of chocolate slathered in tangy cream cheese frosting. It is easy to make a blue velvet cake from scratch with a blend of cocoa powder, vinegar, buttermilk, and bright blue food coloring.

Red velvet also has a bit of cocoa powder for a subtle chocolate taste, but thanks to buttermilk and vinegar, you can spot a tart tang that sets it apart. And wait, there's more than taste!

The trick to using our Red Velvet Color when baking cakes and cupcakes is to lower the pH. Some ways to do this is by substituting baking powder in place of baking soda, using a natural non-alkalized cocoa powder, adding more white vinegar or buttermilk to your red velvet recipe, to achieve a bright red color.

What is red velvet frosting made of? ›

Regular frosting for Red Velvet Cake is usually made with powdered sugar, butter, vanilla extract and sometimes milk, whereas cream cheese frosting is made with cream cheese, powdered sugar, vanilla extract and sometimes butter.

Red velvet cake tastes like very mild cocoa with a slightly tart edge. The cream cheese frosting is the most forward flavor. Perhaps even more important than the taste is the texture: smooth, soft, tender and light with creamy icing.

White Vinegar: It sounds like a strange ingredient in a cake, but it is essential in a red velvet cake. This recipe calls for baking soda to leaven the cake (make the cake rise). The small amount of added vinegar allows the soda to do its best work.

There are multiple ways to thicken the frosting. Add icing sugar to the mixture to quickly and easily stiffen the consistency of the frosting or experiment with other thickening agents such as cornstarch, meringue powder, and arrowroot powder.

If you don't want to use vinegar, you can substitute an equal amount of lemon juice. If you want to skip the acidic liquid altogether, you can substitute a tablespoon of baking powder for each teaspoon of baking soda. Then add water equal to the amount of vinegar you omitted.

Vinegar helps with the rise of our baked goods

When vinegar reacts with baking soda, it creates carbon dioxide bubbles, which act as leavening agents. So as the batter bakes, these tiny bubbles expand, causing the cake to rise and giving it that light, airy texture we all love.

Oil: As mentioned earlier, the use of vegetable oil in red velvet cake recipes helps to keep the cake moist. Unlike butter, which can solidify at normal room temperature, oil remains in liquid form, ensuring that the cake stays tender and moist even after baking.

Parchment + nonstick pan spray. Silicone-coated baking paper (parchment) is the cake baker's best friend. Line the bottom of your pan with nonstick parchment, then coat the pan's sides with nonstick pan spray.