Red(ish Brown) Velvet Cupcakes

Posted by -Colleen

Another first for me! I have always been a boxed cake kind of girl so I was psyched to make my first from scratch cake and frosting. I found my recipe on allrecipes.com and stayed fairly true to it(I always have to mess around with ingredients in some way)! Instead of butter, I used Butter Flavor Crisco. I use this in place of butter in almost all my recipes-it definitely keeps everything moist and flavorful. I also used a light version of the sour cream in the batter. Now, my unintended tweak came with the color-I ran out of food coloring! I thought I had a full bottle (which is what the recipe called for) but I was wrong. Hence, the Reddish-Brown Velvet Cupcake! Oh well-they were not as pretty as they should been. I usually prefer the canned frosting to homemade (I know-gross) but this recipe was awesome! I used light cream cheese and instead of sour cream I substituted Greek yogurt. It came out delicious.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 (1 ounce) bottle McCormick® Red Food Color
• 2 teaspoons McCormick® Pure Vanilla Extract
• Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting:
• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 2 tablespoons sour cream
• 2 teaspoons McCormick® Pure Vanilla Extract
• 1 (16 ounce) box confectioners' sugar

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt in medium bowl. Set aside.
2. Beat butter and sugar in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed 5 minutes or until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Mix in sour cream, milk, food color and vanilla. Gradually beat in flour mixture on low speed until just blended. Do not overbeat. Spoon batter into 30 paper-lined muffin cups, filling each cup 2/3 full.
3. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted into cupcake comes out clean. Cool in pans on wire rack 5 minutes. Remove from pans; cool completely. Frost with Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting.
4. Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting: Beat cream cheese, softened, butter, sour cream and McCormick® Pure Vanilla Extract in large bowl until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in confectioners' sugar until smooth.