Valentine's Day: Red Velvet Cupcakes

As a Valentine's Day present for my sweetie, I decided to make him some Red Velvet Cupcakes - they're not only red (for Valentine's Day!), but they're also a tasty treat that we both love! Ever since tasting the red velvet cupcakes at the Cupcakes of Westdale Village, I've been searching for a recipe so I can make my own! After scouring the internet for recipes, I finally found one that I was interested in trying - the Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe at Simply Recipes. This recipe was created by Garrett McCord of Vanilla Garlic.

The recipe itself was pretty easy to make! I was a little bit concerned with getting the real red color of the cupcakes. The recipe makes two dozen cupcakes - with the first dozen that I baked, the cupcakes weren't quite as red as I would have liked - they are a reddish-brown color. The second batch turned out a lot redder - I think this is due to the fact that I overfilled the cupcake papers the first time around and the cupcakes were a bit too large. With the second batch, they were just the right size and retained the red color a lot better!

The cream cheese icing is the perfect frosting for the top of these cupcakes - the red velvet cupcake isn't meant to have a strong taste to it, so the sweetness of the icing compliments the cake component. I tried to create a few icing designs on top of the cupcakes, as you can see in the picture above.

I found a cupcake display tray with a glass top at this fabulous store called Solutions in Burlington, Ontario - a fantastic organization and storage shop that also happens to have a variety of kitchen supplies!

Oh! You might be wondering why I had to make these cupcakes so far in advance of Valentine's Day! I'm going to be working a lot over the next couple of days so I wouldn't have had the time to make them, so my sweetie got his Valentine's Day present a little bit early! Now, he'll have the entire week (or couple of days, depending!) to enjoy these yummy cupcakes!

For the recipe, please visit this link: Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting. I highly recommend that you try it out if you're a cupcake lover like me!