Pink velvet cupcakes

I was asked to bake by my sister's longtime friend for her daughter's second birthday yesterday. I made cake pops for her last year for this little girl's first birthday. I can't believe it's been a year already!! It was an under the sea theme and she wanted a yellow and pink color scheme. I was going to make some red velvet since that's the most popular flavor (and it's delicious!) but since the cake topper was going to be pink, I thought, it would be cute to make a pink cupcake. I looked up some recipes and found a pink velvet recipe from www.lovefromtheoven.com. How I pick the recipes I want to use, honestly, it's ridiculous, but I look at the pictures they post. I'm a visual person, and if I think it looks good, I don't necessarily believe it's going to taste good, but I think I hope it does. So, I liked the pictures on this one. :) and I also look at the ingredients. This recipe is not actually a true velvet recipe since it doesn't use any cocoa. I think they called it that to make it a little bit more impressive. It's more of a dense cake and not to sweet, but really doesn't taste like a velvet cake, like I thought. It did turn out pretty cute and I paired it with a vanilla buttercream frosting.




Ingredients

1 cup of butter softened
1 1/3 cups sugar
Pink food coloring
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar.



Once light and fluffy add your pink food coloring. Start with a small amount and increase to reach your desired shade of pink. I put a small toothpick dab of coloring here and it looks hot pink as I blended it. I proceeded kind of afraid that my cupcakes would turn out to be hot pink, but believing that the other ingredients would help make it less pink, which turned out to be true! Blend well with butter and sugar.

Add in eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add in vanilla and beat well.



It looks a bit clumpy after this step, but it smooths out after you add the dry ingredients.

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl. Add 1/3 of the dry ingredients to the batter and beat until well combined. Add in 1/2 of the butter milk, beat until combined, followed by another 1/3 of the dry, then the remaining buttermilk and finally the remaining dry ingredients. Look at this nice shade of pink!! :)



Fill paper lined muffin cups two-thirds full


..and bake at 350 degrees for approx 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Watch the cupcakes closely in the last few minutes of baking so that they do not over brown. Allow to cool for ten minutes before removing from pan, then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling.



Enjoy! :)