Red Velvet Cupcakes with White Chocolate Cream Cheese

The title alone makes my mouth water. Clearly the cupcakes did as well. I've been on a baking hiatus due to the preparation of my Fundamentals of Engineering Exam. The exam was April 9th, and since then I've been extremely busy trying to catch up on all the school work I put aside in order to study. I had plans this past weekend to meet up with my friend Dennis for dinner. He's never had any of my baked goods so he was basically begging for me to make him something (and obviously I wanted to bake something). I decided to make Red Velvet Cupcakes, though they aren't the traditional sort. The only Red Velvet characteristic about it is the coco powder and red color (pretty artificial). Either way, they came out delicious.

Mini versions of the cupcakes!

Here's what you need for the cupcakes:

Red Velvet Cupcakes:

• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 (1 ounce) bottle Red Food Color
• 2 teaspoons Pure Vanilla Extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt in medium bowl. Set aside. Beat butter and sugar in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed for 5 minutes or until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Mix in sour cream, milk, food color and vanilla. Gradually beat in flour mixture on low speed until just blended. Do not overbeat. Spoon batter into paper-lined muffin cups, filling each cup 2/3 full. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted into cupcake comes out clean. Cool in pans for at least 5 minutes. This is another recipe where it is really important to not overbeat!

For the frosting, it's pretty obvious I needed to make cream cheese frosting. I searched the internet for "the best". It was not surprising that people were raving over Paula Deen's amazing recipe. You can find it here! (I only prepared 3/4 of the frosting! I always have too much left over)

I wanted to get a little fancy, like add filling or something, so I decided to crack out the white chocolate. I melted about a third of a cup in the microwave for intervals of 20 seconds until all the chocolate was melted. Let it sit for a couple of minutes, stirring once in a while so it doesn't harden. I then took the cream cheese frosting (now room temperature) and started to incorporate it into the white chocolate. It's important that they are both room temperature or else the white chocolate will just harden or the frosting will get too liquidy. I was able to minimize the hardening of the white chocolate and ended up with a super delicious filling. There were tiny little bits of white chocolate that you would get on occasion and they were the perfect texture and combination. 

When adding filling, it's important to either have a hard tipped piping bag or to scoop out some of the center. I choose the latter, which I set aside so I could use as crumble for decoration. I piped the filling into the hole and then used the original cream cheese frosting to top it off. 

Yummy? I think so. I also made some white chocolate shavings to sprinkle on the top. 

Unfortunately I never got to see my friend, but I have some hungry guy friends who were more than willing to take them from me. 

Enjoy!