Red Velvet Bloody Cupcakes

See the Recipe Below

Photo Credit

Ingredients

125g plain flour

1 tablespoons cocoa powder (sifted)

1 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

50 grams soft unsalted butter

100 grams caster sugar

1-2 teaspoons of red gel paste food coloring

6-12 drops vanilla extract

2 medium eggs

90 ml buttermilk 

1/2 teaspoon cider vinegar

12 cupcake cases 

Directions

Pre-heat your oven to 325F

Mix the flour, cocoa, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda in a bowl.

Now for one of the fun parts… In a separate bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until soft and pale. Then add in the red gel paste food coloring until a gorgeous rich red shade.

Gradually add in the dry ingredients along with the eggs to your lovely rubescent butter and sugar mixture. Then add in the buttermilk and cider vinegar!

Fill your cupcake cases until 2/3 full and place on the top shelf. Bake for around 20/25 minutes.

Basic Vanilla Buttercream Recipe

250g butter

300-350g icing sugar / confectioner’s sugar

1 bourbon vanilla pod

Piping tips 

Add half of the of butter diced into pieces. Cream the butter in a mixer. Then gradually add icing sugar and the remaining butter (cut into cubes) until you get a smooth, creamy texture. Add the seeds inside of the vanilla pod by slicing the pod lengthways and scraping the little seeds out with a knife.

‘Blood’ Recipe

1/2 – 1 teaspoon of red gel paste food coloring

6 tablespoons of icing sugar

1 tablespoon of honey or golden syrup

1 tablespoon of room temperature water (though you may need to add more or less depending on the consistency you’d like)

In a small bowl mix together the red gel food paste color with the sugar, syrup and water and set aside.

Sugar Glass Recipe

150g caster or granulated sugar

88ml water

Candy Thermometer

Stove top

Small saucepan

Cake release spray

Flat cookie tray/sheet

In a sauce pan add the sugar and water together and set on the highest heat.

Prepare a flat cookie sheet by spritzing lightly with cake release.

Stir occasionally and leave to bubble until the sugar mix reduces and reaches around 132 degrees C or 270 degrees F. You should start to smell a faint burnt caramel scent. The mix may also begin to go a slight champagne gold color too.

Remove the pan from the heat. Quickly pour your sugar mixture onto a clean baking sheet or tray with a rim or lip around it’s edges. Quickly spread the mix to the edges by tilting the sheet or tray. Don’t worry if the mix doesn’t reach the tray edges; sometimes the cake release spray will stop this spreading too much. Leave to cool and harden (this may take from 30 minutes to 1 hour).

Don’t leave your ‘glass’ for too long, however. Sugar glass is hygroscopic, which means that it quite readily absorbs moisture from it’s surrounding atmosphere. As soon as the mix has cooled and harden quickly smash it in the required jagged shards before it loses that lovely brittle and hard quality!

Now it’s time to assemble your Red Bloody Velvet Cupcakes! Pipe some generous swirls of your lovely vanilla buttercream atop your cakes, stab a large shard into the top of each and then using a disposable piping bag with your ‘blood’ mix pipe messy dripping splattered blood where the sugar glass meets the cupcake

Adapted From http://junipercakery.co.uk/blog/halloween-red-bloody-velvet-cupcakes/