Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

My good friend Angie brought me a dozen doughnuts to the hospital when I had Gabriel and Cassidy. I called her a couple of months ago to let her know I wanted to return the favor with cupcakes when she had her sweet new little baby. She requested red velvet piled high with delicious cream cheese frosting.

My red velvet cake recipe is a family recipe passed down from Cassidy's Great Mam-ma, so I won't be sharing it. Sorry! The cream cheese frosting is a recipe I just made up by throwing stuff in a bowl. It's just butter, cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla. It would be really delicious to eat a big bowl of it by the spoonful while relaxing in a candlelit bath. I would never do that, though. That's just a fantasy of someone who's been on a diet for a really long time!

These cupcakes were really good. However, cupcakes with cream cheese frosting is not how I grew up eating red velvet cake. It's meant to be in a 3-layer cake layered with this amazing cooked butter icing (also a secret family recipe). The cooked butter icing is not thick enough to be piped onto a cupcake, though, and my sweet friend asked for cream cheese frosting. She had a baby. She should get whatever she wants.

 Combining cocoa and red food coloring

 Combining shortening and sugar

 Adding the red cocoa mixture

 Mixing

 Delicious red chocolate buttermilk cake batter

 The cupcakes are out of the oven!

 

 Piped with cream cheese frosting

A little creativity . . . baked some cupcakes right inside these baby food jars,

piped the frosting in, screwed on the lid, and tied a blue ribbon for

the new little baby boy.

Cassidy takes a taste.

It's good! It's good!

 

 "Get in my belly!"

 

Mommy and Cassidy snuggle baby Ryland

while his mommy has a cupcake.

Cassidy's Cream Cheese Frosting

2 blocks cream cheese

2 sticks unsalted butter

2 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

6 cups powdered sugar (more or less depending on desired consistency)