Adventures in Red Velvet

Among the many gifts I received over the Christmas holiday, my friend Lisa got me a red velvet cupcake mix. And not just any cupcake mix, but a mix from none other than the famous Sprinkles Cupcakes in CA! Lisa has told me about this place and we've always talked about going there when I'm out for a visit, but we have yet to make it. So instead of tasting one of their yummy cupcake flavors in person, I was able to make my own at home. Now if only I could charge $3.25 a cupcake...

I'll let you be the judge, but I think I came pretty close to their decorating style. Not bad for the first time, anyway...

I started by whipping up the batter in my good ol' KitchenAid stand mixer. The good thing about having the red velvet as a mix is that the food coloring was already in the boxed mix, meaning no playing around with red food coloring and turning my fingers red.

Once the batter was ready to go, I transferred the batter to my paper cups in my cupcake pan and put them in the oven. They came out very even and springy.

I got my mixer going again for the best part...the cream cheese frosting!

Once that was ready to go and my cupcakes were cooled, I got out my flat frosting knife and slathered on the frosting. The directions were very specific that to get the Sprinkles signature look, to use the frosting knife to flatten the outside edge of icing.

Pretty snazzy, eh? As you can see, the kit also came with decorative candy pieces for the middle of the cakes...very mod. And from the Sprinkles website, it looks like they decorate each different cupcake flavor with a different colored candy decoration.

Here are my dozen in all their glory!

I took them to a trivia night fundraiser and shared them with my "trivia team." Each person had one and I got a couple of compliments, so all's well that ends well. I had one too and they were quite yummy...and quite rich!

Still one of my favorite cake flavors...