After many years in the wilderness, trying and failing to make red velvet anything, I thought I had succeeded thanks to a bake at home kit from Crumbs and Doilies!
I’m not kidding when I say I’ve tried to make various red velvet bakes about 100 times. Well, ok, 5 times. And every time, EVERY TIME, the bakes aren’t red. No matter which method I use, which recipe I use, which food colouring I use, I just get brown red velvet cakes. And brown red velvet cakes are a problem because they’re not red, and ergo can’t possibly count as red velvet cakes.
They just won’t go red! Believe it or not, here is a photo of one attempt. I mean… It’s not red, is it.
Anyway, I follow Crumbs and Doilies and Cupcake Jemma on Instagram, and saw that they were selling bake at home kits; one of which was for red velvet cupcakes. I decided to give these stupid cupcakes one more go before forever assigning red velvet into a ‘just give up’ folder in my mind.
The kit arrived and it contains everything you need to make these. It comes with the flour mix, vanilla, cider vinegar, food colouring, cupcake cases and icing sugar. You can make these vegan or regular; I made them regular (albeit with lactose free milk) and I just needed to add milk to the sponge mix, and needed cream cheese and butter for the icing.
I was so excited when I started mixing the sponge ingredients and the mixture was actually red! Bright red!
I was even more excited when I got the cupcakes out of the oven (after 20 minutes) and they were still red! This was the best attempt I’d ever made.
The mix ended up making me about 15 cupcakes, so I kept a few back to crumble up and use to decorate the top of the cupcakes.
The icing again was really easy – I already had the icing sugar in the pack, so just had to mix in the softened butter and cream cheese.
I piped it on to decorate the cupcakes. I crumbled up two of the cakes to use on the top as decoration, but as you can see… they’re actually not really that red. So on half the cupcakes I used some red sugar to try and inject some colour.
I honestly could cry. Do people Photoshop their red velvet cakes?! I don’t know how they do it.
Having said that, these are the most red cupcakes I’ve ever made. Even though they are still mostly brown. I think now it’s time to just accept it. I cannot make red velvet cakes. I don’t know where I’m going wrong, but it’s just not happening. This makes me very sad, but what can you do?
In case you’re wondering I also bought a New York Cookie kit (white chocolate and raspberry) and the cookies were absolutely amazing. Once you’ve shaped them into balls, you keep them in the freezer and can cook them from frozen. This is particularly fun for me as it means I can take out one cookie at a time and bake as I go, and I don’t have to worry about making a big batch!
Anyway, you can get these kits, and loads more, from the Crumbs and Doilies or Cupcake Jemma websites. I have my eye on more kits, so stay tuned as it’s likely I’ll be making more!
Also, have I spelt the word ‘doilies’ wrong somewhere in this blog? Yes probably – there are just too many i’s and l’s that look similar so allow it please!
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No not red really are they? I would still enjoy them tho, gooey topping looks yummy. & yummy biscuits also. Bang goes the New Years diet haha.
The cakes look good even if not very red.
Did you use red gel food colouring?? That’s worked for me.