Healthier Indulgence: Red Velvet Cupcakes

I've had lots of requests for sweets and desserts to post on the blog so I thought it was finally time to serve it up!

On Saturday night, we went to a cookout at our friend, Sarah's house. She invited us last Thursday and I offered to bring a dessert. I decided to make Red Velvet Cupcakes to share with the group. Red Velvet is such a popular cake flavor now so I thought it would be fun. At the grocery store, I debated taking the short cut of buying premade frosting, until I looked at the ingredients! Every single manufacturer uses hydrogenate oil and/or high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)! I decided to skip the shortcut and make my frosting from scratch so I bought ingredients for frosting: lowfat cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, and lowfat buttermilk.

I asked my Twitter friends for recipe suggestions for their favorite "light" Red Velvet Cupcakes. I saw this recipe for it in my December 2009 Cooking Light magazine. That's the recipe that I used, but I got great suggestions for cupcakes that weren't lightened. I took them to our friend's house and they all LOVED it! I told my friend Jill, that they were "light" and she was happily surprised!

Saturday was busy for us because we hosted our friend, Mathew, and his six-year old daughter, Samantha, for lunch. I made turkey tostadas (check out my recipe for taco filling) with all the fixings. After lunch I made the cupcakes so they had time to cool before I frosted them with the icing. Then, later in the afternoon, our friend, Samantha, came to visit us from Chicago. She offered to make the icing so I could sleep! What a good friend. I was trying to do too much, I think so I'm thankful for the help.

Here's a couple tips for this recipe:

• Doesn't Yield 30: The recipe makes less than 30 cupcakes if you fill your cupcakes 2/3 of the way. I like my cupcakes a bit taller. I got about 18 full size cupcakes and 2 larger cupcakes that I cooked in ramekins.
• Less Sugar in the Frosting: Samantha used about 2 cups of powdered sugar instead of the 3 1/2 cups the recipe called for and it was sweet enough. She suggested that if you use less sugar, you might want to pull back the buttermilk as well.
  
• Use a Whisk to Whip the Frosting: Samantha struggled with some lumps in the frosting and she used my stand mixer and the paddle attachment. When I woke up from my nap, she asked me about it and I suggested the whisk attachment. This cleared up the lumps and whipped the consistency of the frosting.
• Serving/Storage: Check out the picture in this post or on Amazon. I have a useful Tupperware brand cupcake carrier that I used to bring the cupcakes to the cookout. The container has a handle to make it easy to carry and it has rings on the bottom to hold cupcakes in place while carrying and traveling. The blue bottom is reversable and you can use the flat side for carrying a sheet cake.
  

Aaron gave Ava a bath on Saturday afternoon before we left for the party and he dressed her in this onesie with a cupcake on the front! I asked him if he did that on purpose since we had cupcakes to bring to the cookout and he said no, he just picked it out. It must have been subconscious!

Today is Ava's 1-month birthday and tonight, Aaron and I will celebrate with the leftover red velvet cupcakes that I baked in the ramekins! When she turns 1-year old, I'll have a fun cake that she can enjoy!