Red Velvet Cupcakes

At work, every Thursday is "Throwdown Thursday" or "Challenge Thursday". We all like to lay down challenges for our co-workers, like "if you make $200, I'll buy you shoes" or "if I make more money than you, I get to pie you in the face." Yeah, it's pretty random. So my challenge was for a group of people; whoever made the most money that day would get to pick the next thing I bake. The winner chose red velvet cupcakes. They're definitely not my favorite, but it turns out a lot of people really like them. My mother almost fainted when I told her what I was making. I guess it's her favorite.

I'll be honest. I went to Duncan Hines route on this one. I had just come back from the dentist, and then I had to buy yarn and make scarves, and I just didn't feel like buying cocoa and red food coloring just to use a little bit.

Obviously these cupcakes needed to have filling (duh), so I used this recipe for the filling. Cream cheese, sugar, and egg. Simple and delicious. The filling lasted for 36 cupcakes, and I was only expecting to last for 24.

This is the type of filling that sinks into the cupcake as it bakes. When I took them out of the oven, I couldn't see the filling at all. At first, I thought I was losing my mom.

I had my mom try one for me just to make sure they were ok. She said "do they all have a surprise inside?" That's how I knew the filling worked. Also because I cut one in half to see.

Cream cheese frosting. It took about 1.25 containers to frost all 48 cupcakes.

When I ran out of cream cheese filling, I used the other filling method. I cut a cone from the top of each cupcake and filled the space with cream cheese frosting. My mom had one of each, and she said the kind with frosting in the middle was better.

It kinda looks like I decorated them with some red sprinkles or something, but that's really just crumbs.

I think my next project will be cinnamon rolls. I guess that means I'll be buying self-rising flour.

Birthday Cupcakes!

I knew I would be baking cupcakes for my birthday, but I've been feeling a need to make cupcakes with filling. I don't know why. So I found one recipe with the filling added after the cupcakes are baked and another recipe with the filling baked into the cupcakes. I've never done it either way before, so, yes, there were issues.

The recipe said to use cake mix. Alright, I'm not arguing, Plus I was a little pressed for time with the laundry and birthday dinner and dentist.

Here I go again adding too much batter to the cups. This is probably going to backfire.

Yep, they're too big. Also, they're a little burned on the part that's touching the pan. I just put extra frosting there and hoped no one would notice. That's probably because I baked them at 400 for 15 minutes so they would be done faster.

I was supposed to have two full pans, but when I made the first batch too big, I messed up the yield.

Much better size. I'll try to remember to use less batter next time.

I cut a little pyramid out of the top of each muffin and then cut off the pointy part to make more space for filling.

I went to Target for supplies, and they didn't have any lemon instant pudding. I thought about using another flavor, like vanilla or chocolate, but I thought that would be too weird.

There's about 1.5 teaspoons of pudding in each cupcake.

For the chocolate cupcakes, I had to make the cream cheese frosting separately. I didn't read the directions very carefully, so I mixed the ingredients in the wrong order.

I was supposed to cream the cheese and sugar together, whatever that means. Maybe I'll look it up later. Instead, I mixed the sugar, egg and chocolate chips.

It was a little difficult mixing the cream cheese into the chocolate chip mixture. I used neufchatel cheese instead of cream cheese, just because I've never used it before. That maybe have been a mistake.

According to the instructions, the filling should be on top of the cupcake batter. Well, that sounds more like topping than filling. I was a little worried, but after I took them out of the oven, some of the "filling" started to sink into the cupcakes. They looked weird, but the frosting took care of that.

I used cream cheese frosting for the chocolate cupcakes and lemon frosting for the lemon cupcakes. Everyone really loved them, but I didn't actually eat one myself. Sometimes after I bake something, I don't feel like eating it. Is that weird? Probably. I'm thinking maybe I'll do scones next.