Growing up I often asked for a Red Velvet cake for my birthday. One year I remember Mom making a version with peppermint icing, with a recipe I think came from Southern Living. I decided to try something like that, but in miniature form, adapting the recipe Mom always used for red velvet cake, which I think came from my grandmother. I entered these cupcakes in the “Biochemistry Bake-Off” at work a couple years ago, when we first started this blog.  It’s become one of the most popular posts on the site, especially this time of year, but the photos were long past due for a remake — we’ve come a long way since then — and my birthday yesterday was the perfect excuse to make myself cupcakes.

My favorite part of Red Velvet cake is the cream cheese frosting, so I stuck with that for this festive version, but flavored it with peppermint.  I garnished some with a bit of peppermint bark (yes, I know I need to update that post as well…), and some of them I frosted with a candy cane swirl. To get the swirl effect, dye some of the frosting red with food coloring (it will take a lot!) and carefully fill one side of a pastry bag with the red frosting and the other side with white. Then, when you pipe it out of a star tip, you get a striped swirl.

You might also like:

• Red Velvet Cake Truffles
• Mocha Peppermint Bark Cookies
• Peppermint Bark
• Nutty Fingers

Peppermint Red Velvet Cupcakes
Makes 2 dozen cupcakes, or use the same recipe for a 3 layer cake.
Note that I never seem to get a nice domed top out of these cupcakes, but once you frost them it’s not a big deal, and the cake still tastes delicious.

For the cake:

1 c butter (softened)
2 c sugar
2 eggs (room temperature)
1 T cocoa
1 T vinegar
2 1/2 c cake flour
1/2 t salt
1/2 t baking soda
1 c buttermilk
1 t vanilla
1 oz red food coloring

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat until fluffy.

Add cocoa to vinegar, and add to creamed mixture.

Sift remaining dry ingredients and gradually add to batter. Add buttermilk, vanilla, and food coloring.

Bake in cupcake wrappers (makes 2 dozen) or bake in three greased and floured 9″ round cake pans, at 350 F for 25 minutes.

Let cool completely before icing.

Peppermint Cream Cheese Frosting:

3/4 package of cream cheese (6 oz) (softened)
1/2 cup butter (softened)
1 1-lb. box of powdered sugar
1 t peppermint extract

Beat cream cheese and butter. Gradually add sugar, beating until smooth. Add extract and beat until blended.

Believe it or not, I actually have a better reason than the usual, “Sorry, we’re busy” for not posting much lately. If you keep an eye on the flickr site, you might’ve noticed that food pictures have been appearing there but never migrating over to the site. Well, the reason is that I’ve had a side project going on — I’ve been making a cookbook! My good friend Jessica is getting married today, and as a wedding present for her, I gathered recipes from her friends and family and put them together in a cookbook that I had printed over at blurb.com. I didn’t have time to make everything myself, but we did test out and photograph some of the recipes, so those are what you may have seen show up on flickr. I wanted to share some of these delicious recipes with you, too, but I didn’t want to ruin the surprise for Jessica, who I think might read this here blog occasionally. But the beautiful wedding was yesterday today, so the cat’s finally out of the bag. The next several posts will be recipes shared by Jessica’s friends and family.

First up is this Irish cream poundcake from Katrin Baker, an advisor to both Jessica and me when we were in the Honors program at NCSU. I couldn’t resist adding some chopped chocolate to Katrin’s recipe, though I’m sure it would be delicious either way. As Katrin says, this cake actually gets better after it sits for a day or two. I especially liked it toasted. Thanks, Katrin!

Chocolate Chip Irish Cream Poundcake

adapted from Katrin Baker, originally from Cooking Light, she thinks

2 3/4 cups cake flour (about 11 ounces)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup low-fat or fat-free cream cheese, softened
10 tablespoons butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 large eggs
3/4 cup Irish cream liqueur
3/4 cup dark chocolate, chopped, or chocolate chip (optional)
Cooking spray
2 tablespoons powdered sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 325 F.

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.

Beat together cream cheese and butter with a mixer at high speed. Beat in granulated sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla. Add eggs, 1 at a time; beat well after each addition. Beat on high speed 1 minute.

With mixer on low, add flour mixture and liqueur alternately to sugar mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture; mixing well after each addition. Stir in chopped chocolate, if using.

Pour batter into a 12-cup Bundt pan coated with cooking spray.

Bake at 325 F for 55 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes on a wire rack; remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack. If desired, sift powdered sugar over cake.

The cupcake craze is still in full swing in Palo Alto, where we can choose from Sprinkle’s or Kara’s Cupcakes (which originated in San Francisco).  I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the quality of the cake from Sprinkle’s on the couple of time I’ve tasted them.  I finally decided to try out Kara’s a couple weekends ago — after hiking up Half Dome the day before, I felt like I could afford a little treat.  While picking a cupcake may sometimes be a difficult decision, this time it was easy.  Fleur de Sel cupcake — “chocolate cupcake with caramel filling, ganache frosting and fleur de sel.”  Killer combination!  And while it was indeed a wonderful melding of flavors, with the sweet caramel, the rich chocolate, and the salt to cut through it all, the cake itself was disappointingly dry.  Honestly, I felt like I could do better.  So, the next weekend, if I do say so myself, I did.

I made the devil’s food cake recipe my grandmother used to use, adding a bit of extra chocolate, and topped it with a very dark chocolatey buttercream adapted from Mark Bittman.  I based the caramel on a recipe from — you guessed it! — Smitten Kitchen.  This was definitely the best caramel I have ever made in terms of cooking it the right amount of time (a feat I’m sure I will never repeat), but it was a bit runny for the filling, so I need to work on that.  Despite being a bit messy from the runny caramel, the flavor of these cupcakes was a hit, and I’m sure I’ll be making them again.

And finally, a word of warning. If you have extra chocolate frosting and caramel filling at the end, by no means should you alternate dipping a (clean) finger in each one and licking it off until you run out of fingers. If you start doing that, you may never stop. Not that I would know.

You might also like:

Fleur de Sel Cupcakes

Inspired by Kara’s Cupcakes

24 devil’s food cupcakes (see below)
1 recipe chocolate buttercream (see below)
1 recipe caramel filling (see below)
fleur de sel or other flaky sea salt

In order to get a bunch of filling in the middle, I cut the tops off and filled them that way. You can also inject the filling, but I think it’s hard to get as much in that way. To fill by cutting off the tops: cut a cone out of the top of the cupcake at about a 45 degree angle. Cut most of the pointed end off of the cone (oooh look — a snack!). Pipe filling in the remaining hole and put the top back on.

Top with chocolate buttercream frosting. Sprinkle lightly with fleur de sel. They keep fine at least overnight in the fridge (covered).

Devil’s Food Cake

Adapted from Mrs. Fred Reed’s recipe in the Friedland Cookbook

1/2 lb (2 sticks) butter
1 1/4 c sugar
2 eggs
1 c buttermilk
2 t baking soda
2 1/2 c flour
2 t vanilla
2 oz chocolate

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Cream the butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time. (Don’t overbeat here, or, as I found, your cake will probably fall. At least I think that’s why it fell. It’ll still taste good though.)

Dissolve soda in the buttermilk. Alternate additions of flour and buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour. Melt the chocolate and stir into the batter.

Pour into cupcake wrappers and bake at 400 F for 20 minutes. Makes about 2 dozen cupcakes (or 3 9″ layers or 1 quarter sheet cake).

Chocolate Buttercream

Adapted from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

1 stick butter
1 t vanilla
1/4 t salt
4 c powdered sugar
1 c cocoa
1/3 c cream or milk (plus more if needed)

Cream the butter in an electric mixer. Cream in vanilla and salt. Cream in the sugar and cocoa a little at a time. (I know it sounds like a lot of cocoa but trust me — you want to.) Stir in the milk, a little at a time, until it’s the right consistency.

Salted Caramel Filling

Adapted from the Smitten Kitchen.

1 c sugar
1/2 c water
6 T butter
1/2 c milk or cream (I used milk; I’m hoping cream will help thicken up the filling a bit next time)

Mix sugar and water in a large saucepan over medium to medium high heat. Once sugar has dissolved, stop stirring. Continue to cook until it’s amber-colored. I actually have found that’s it’s easier to pay attention to smell than color (partly because all of my pots have black bottoms). If it smells like caramel it’s good. Note that this may take fifteen minutes or so, but once it gets close, watch it carefully as it can go from underdone to burned in no time, and there’s nothing to do with burned caramel but start over. Once it’s colored to your nose’s liking, stir in the butter. (The sauce will foam up.) Then stir in the cream and stir it until smooth. Cool completely before using to fill cupcakes. Extra sauce keeps for a while in the fridge (not that it will be there long).