Patriotic Red Velvet Cupcakes

I love fourth of July. It's probably one of my favorite holidays and I think it's terribly underrated compared to christmas and new years and thanksgiving. But I feel this way because my family always always has the best barbeques/pool parties for 4th of July. The kids swim in the backyard pool until their skin turn charcoal, while my uncle grills delicious meat of all kinds. Usually my mom makes fruit smoothies and someone else brings the fireworks. It's seriously the highlight of my summer.
I started contributing my own baked goods last year to the family parties. I made Edible Eagles last year. This year I made patriotic cupcakes to celebrate the independence of our very country. Woo!
After mixing all the ingredients I came up with this...mixture of bubbles and dye even after having mixed it for 5 minutes.. I freaked out momentarily, assuming I had added too much of something (probably oil) but my friend Grace saved the day by beating it with a whisk with strong, solid movements. It turned out beautifully:
(My dad said it looked like tomato sauce. I should've added more food coloring but I ran out!)

The recipe was vague on how much sugar to add, so I added as much as I thought was necessary. (Around 1.5 cups?)

Red Velvet Cupcakes by Sweet Tooth

CUPCAKES:
2-1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cocoa
1-1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1-1/2 cups canola oil
1 tsp vinegar
1 tsp red gel food coloring dissolved in 6 tbsp water (or 1 1 oz bottle)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk

FROSTING:
1/2 cup butter
1 (8oz) package cream cheese
1 box confectioners sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare muffin tins with 24 liners
- Mix the flour, baking soda, and cocoa in one bowl, sugar and eggs in another, and oil, vinegar, food coloring, vanilla, and buttermilk in yet another.
- Add the oil mixture to the egg mixture and beat until well combined
- Add the flour mixture in small intervals, mixing well witah each addition
- Fill 24 liners up with batter 3/4 of the way full
- Bake for 25 minutes and let completely cool before frosting
- For the frosting, cream together the butter and cream cheese and add the sugar in small intervals until well mixed.
- Mix in the vanilla and frost the cupcakes!

Father's Day: Brownie Bottom Ice Cream Cupcakes

For Father's Day, I decided to make Brownie Bottom Ice Cream Cupcakes as seen from Joy the Baker. The tricky part about this recipe is how quickly you have to work to avoid ice cream melting or the ganache hardening prematurely. I bought standard brownie mix (out of laziness)

I used semi sweet chocolate for the ganache!

I now realize why making whipped cream by hand failed the first time I tried...I hadn't whipped it long enough! This time I stood by the mixer for over 3 minutes to make it thick and fluffy.

Whipped cream, cherry and caramel syrup to top it off! (I tried really hard to decorate it better than Joy the Baker did because my poor cupcakes looked deflated without it all!)

Happy Father's Day!

Jenelle's Birthday Cupcakes

Since I didn't have much time, I decided to bake cupcakes for Jenelle's birthday from store-bought cake mix. So here we have 19 cupcakes made from yellow butter cake mix with nutella frosting!