We spent Christmas and New Years 2009 with my husband’s family in Sudbury and had a blast. At the time, we were living in Toronto and my girlfriends were over every single Saturday night without fail to knit and eat whatever ridic treat I forced on them and you know, maaaaaybe hit the wine. 😉 So, those two weeks caused some withdrawal for all of us and we were all anxious to hang out again. My dear friend Gill called me when we were driving home and asked how far out I was. I told her we were about an hour away and she said she wanted to kick off ‘Cake Year – 2010’ with a red velvet and she wanted to do it right now, which is one of the many reasons I adore her so. So she kidnapped my sister to buy a head scratcher and ingredients for the red velvet at a mall by our house and met us there (yeah, I dunno, she just really wanted one – I will post pics of us playing with it after the recipe). It is still hilarious to me that I was baking the first cake of January less than half an hour after rolling into our garage. I am loving Los Angeles, but man I miss those nights. <3 So, the point of my long winded story is that when Gill's birthday rolled around this year I knew I wasn't going to get to see her and celebrate with her but I really wanted to show some love (no worries though, she and her kick ass bro Will and cousin Al came to visit about a month later and we got to have some fun). Sooooo, I baked her a batch of red velvet cupcakes and ate them in her honor. The kids ate a few and I shared them with our neighbors too! The thing with red velvet cake of course is getting the color right. If you dump a bottle of red food coloring in, you'll get the red you're after but you risk it tasting funny and then needing to add more sugar. The solution is beets! But not beet juice, because it tends to make the batter too runny and then it doesn't want to hold together while baking. You need to roast your beets for as long as possible (at least an hour) and then puree them to death. There are a lot of different recipes worth trying, but this one worked for me!

3/4 cup beet puree
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 1/2 teaspoons vinegar
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
3/4 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/4 cups flour
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon cocoa powder

So first, preheat to 350 and pop cupcake liners in your muffin tin. Cream together the butter and sugar, then add the eggs and mix again and add the vanilla and give it another stir. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder.
This is the crucial part. You have to mix the buttermilk with the beet puree, vinegar and lemon juice in a small bowl before you add it to the rest of the wet ingredients. It will be an epic time wasting fail if you just dump it all in. Boo! Also, I always just add vinegar to make my own buttermilk but in this case I chose to err on the side of caution and actually buy a small carton of it because I really, really didn’t want to muck it up. 😉
So there are my three bowls, from left to right; beets puree mixture, cocoa/flour mixture and sugar/butter/eggs mixture. I added the cocoa/flour mixture to the sugar/butter bowl with the mixer on low and then slowly poured in the beet mixture. The flash made this picture a bit brighter than it was in person but it was really bright! Also, word of advice, beets don’t mess around, they’ll dye your fingers pink no problem! Now put them in the oven for about 20 minutes (maybe a little more or less, check them at 15 minutes or so to be safe) and whip up some chocolate buttercream while you’re waiting for them to cool off.
I thought the little red Gobstoppers gave them just the right touch, no? Love you Gill!
Now, about that head scratcher. My sister knows that my knees are incredibly ticklish. I mean, incredibly. Hysterical laughter and pathetic screams. So naturally, she attacked my knees with it….but she? Looks way cute.