Red velvet cupcakes with pink jasmine decoration

We used to have a lovely lady at work who made cupcakes for our social get-togethers, but as she moved to Perth a few months ago someone had to pick up where she left off. And a recent farewell for yet another work collegue was a great opportunity for me to have some fun with making pretty cupcakes.

I used the red velvet cupcake recipe from issue 41 of Donna Hay (Oct/Nov 2008). I've used it before and it always impresses. The colour comes from red food colouring, but the delicate flavour comes from only 1/4 cup of cocoa. The small amount of cocoa gives it more of a subtle spiced flavour, rather than a chocolate flavour, which goes beautifully with the cream cheese frosting. I do usually find though I have to add a bit more icing sugar than Donna uses in the frosting. Like three times as much, otherwise the frosting won't hold its shape on the cupcake.

I piped on the frosting with a star tip in a piping bag. The last time I used this piping tip was three Christmases ago using white chocolate ganache, and the results were so disasterous i ended up smoothing the icing over with a knife so noone would see how much I sucked at piping. This time though, I seem to have gotten it right. My piped frosting looked really cute, but still showed off the red colour of the cake, and made a great backdrop for my pink flowers.

The pink flowers I made myself using fondant I had coloured pink, and a small jasmine flower cutter. I placed the flowers onto sponges I had dusted with icing sugar, used a ball tool to press them into shape, then left them to dry for a few hours before piping the centres with glace icing. For the record, I should have used royal icing because it would have lookd better and been easier to pipe, but I don't have any mix and I didn't want to fuss about with beating egg whites and whatnot for the sake of some tiny white dots. I attached the flowers to the cakes by simply pressing them gently onto the cream cheese frosting while it was freshly piped, and therefore still very moist and clingy.

Thoughts - OMG I have to make red velvet cupcakes more often! They really do have the most divine flavour, my co-workers were all very impressed. And I must say I'm very proud of my piping efforts, they really have improved dramatically. That said, my flowers still need work. I don;t expect to get good at them overnight, I will need more practice. I've already gotten some tips from some fellow decorators at the Planet Cake forum, and from a friend who is a pastry chef, so I'll get there :)