As a first timer, I decided to make red velvet cupcakes from a box (or cylinder really)....gasp, I know!! Next time they will be from scratch, trust me! I chose this mix from Williams-Sonoma.
Everything went smoothly while mixing....thank GOD because I never thought about the fact that when you make red velvet cupcakes, the batter is red, and therefore everything else in your kitchen becomes red! Also lucky that red goes with the theme in my house (if I even really have a 'theme').
The recipe states that is makes 24 regular sized cupcakes. But of course I wanted to make mini cupcakes because everything is cuter when it's small. And because the Mr. bought me this adorable pan and I've been itching to use it. He also bought me some adorable liners to go with the mini pan.
After I filled the mini pan, I had remaining batter so decided to fill regular size cupcakes too. I used a 6-cupcakes tray because I didn't think I would have more than that. Worked perfectly...I'm genius!! Well, not really, I just wish. I'm getting there though. I put both pans in the oven at the same time (mini pan on bottom and regular pan on top) and set separate timers for each: 13 minutes for minis and 22 minutes for regular. As the timers went off, I tested them with my new OXO Cake Tester (which is the best invention ever....no more knife slits or wasting toothpicks that then get lost on the ground and stolen by the kiddos) and they were perfection.
I'm not going to lie, they look so yummy and nice and moist. Next up on the to do list: teach myself to frost properly using a bag and tip and all the fancy shmancy stuff the pros use. I went online and read about 10 blogs on how to frost a cupcake. I also bought a Wilton Cake/Cupcake decorating beginners kit at Michael's. It came with a few disposable bags and 5 tips. I didn't want to invest in a lot because I may not like it as much as I think I will and because there is so much out there it's overwhelming and hard to determine what to start with.
I made the frosting according to the Sprinkles package (can we say holy butter and cream cheese heaven-ness!). I cut the tip off the frosting bag and put in the tip I wanted to use: the plain round tip. I wanted the clean puffy look. I put the bag in a tall glass to hold it up while I put in the frosting, worked like a charm.
And away I went with frosting the cupcakes. I started with the swirls on the outside and continued inwards. I wasn't sure how much frosting to use so some of them didn't get frosting all the way down the cupcake top. And of course I had so much frosting left over, but if I had added it to the cupcakes it would have looked messy. Yuck!
It was also a lot harder than I thought to keep the circle layers round and touching each other. As I started to get towards the end and knew I had plenty of frosting, I started using a lot more on each circle and then it was easier to keep the circular layers touching each other and looking straighter. Here is a picture of what I would say was the best frosted cupcake out of the bunch.
They may not have been the prettiest cupcakes, but they sure were delicious!
I should have added the piece to the frosting bags that allows you to change the tips on that bag so that I could have tested out all the tips. But at the time I wasn't thinking about that. Shoot. Of course I kept the leftover frosting (because I can't throw anything away unless it's clearly gone bad), so maybe I will just start decorating some foil to just try out the tips. I need to practice and see if I have any potential to make something appealing looking. :)
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