Workday five sweet treats: "Red" Velvet Cupcakes

As you all know by now, I typically embark on some sort of baking adventure for BK's team during the first of the month. Workday four is their busiest day of the month- it lasted until 4am for BK this month, which was at least better than January when he didn't get come home between the two work days.

So for February I decided to make Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing in honor of Valentine's Day. Even though Valentine's Day is not until next week, I thought I would recognize the holiday through baking this month. BK and I will be traveling next week, so I figured, why not?

The only problem I ran into? Apparently the red food coloring we have here is not quite a potent as the stuff in the US. BK phrased it well, noting that instead of red velvet, we had brown velvet cupcakes. Didn't exactly work out the way I thought. Here's how it went...

Mix the wet ingredients together and the dry ingredients together

I couldn't really tell what color the cupcakes were going to turn out. The batter did seem a little bit reddish, but I couldn't be sure about how red it would be. Maybe the cocoa powder is darker here too?

Everything mixed together

Cupcakes ready to be put into the oven

Cooling cupcakes

The cupcake taste and texture were great! Really tasty and the cupcakes were springy and crumbly on the inside- I was really happy with how they turned out…outside of the color and all.

Brown velvet cupcakes

The best part (of course) was the cream cheese icing! The recipe calls for a ton of powdered sugar. I didn't use quite as much as it called for and just judged the icing based on taste and texture. The icing also worked better after I chilled it in the fridge- I did it overnight, but I'm sure a couple of hours would work as well. They tasted as good as they look!

The finished product

The cupcakes turned out fairly large as well, which is a little different from what I normally take to BK's team. They went over really well with everyone and were all gone shortly into the afternoon.

BK's team was pretty funny when I delivered the cupcakes that afternoon. I always get lots of questions about how I'm feeling and comments about how much I've grown over the past month. The other thing I found quite amusing (and flattering) was that they told me I could have one month off when Baby K comes- April- then they wanted me back in May.

Just briefly, the other baking I did this week was a loaf of Sweet Cinnamon Bread. I have been on a kick of making cinnamon toast for breakfast lately and thought I might make it a little easier on myself in the morning and just make a loaf of cinnamon bread.

Sweet Cinnamon Bread

It turned out well, but was a little more done on the sides and bottom of the loaf than I would have preferred. I did have one small success though- for the first time ever my bread didn't fall in the middle. Typically when I bake something like this, for some reason the middle of the loaf falls and the bread ends up in the shape of a brick. It's always tasted good, just hasn't been the perfect shape. I have no clue what I did differently, but it's been a nice addition to breakfast this week.

Yum!