Sheesh, this is my third post for the day. I’m on fire! Or maybe I’m just bored. At least I’m being productive.
In addition to the chocolate covered strawberries, I wanted to make cupcakes for the kids and what better way to make a V-Day cupcake than to make red velvet cupcakes?
While I was at Safeway I saw a box of Duncan Hines red velvet cake mix I’d never seen before that included frosting. Even though the frosting looked pretty terrible on the box, I thought I’d give it a try. They had me at “decadent.”
Plus, it comes with a pastry bag, that’s cool stuff!
Since I was making decadent cupcakes, I figured I should use snazzy cups, so I used some of my leftover gold cupcake cups. And since I still have guilty feelings over staining my cousin Jenn’s cupcake pan with gold foil, I double lined the pan with a plain cup and the gold cup inside. After baking, I simply peeled the plain one off. This box only makes 12 cupcakes, but that was fine by me.
Everything was going well until it came time to make the frosting. It only calls for half a stick of butter and 4 teaspoons of water, mixed gradually with the dry packet of frosting. So of course, it didn’t make much frosting. In addition, it tasted way too sugary.
And then, get this, the box says to use 1 tablespoon of frosting per cupcake. What is this, 1989? Plus, look at that cupcake on the front of the box. That ain’t a tablespoon! In addition, the amount of frosting the bag makes is basically enough for 12 tablespoons. In other words, it’s nowhere near enough.
Luckily I had a Costco tub of cream cheese and I dolloped in a few huge spoons and mixed it until I liked the taste. After that, it tasted amazing.
I’d bought a bottle of red and clear crystals only to find out that a box of sprinkles another parent gave me contained the exact same bottle. UNOPENED. *facepalm* She moved away and gave me all her baking stuff, which was a lot.
For decorations, I used several types of sprinkles and then put chocolate cherries from Harry & David in the middle of some of them.
Those turned out to be my favorites! I took a little white heart sprinkle from the mixed Valentine’s one and stuck it in the middle with a little smudge of frosting to make it stick.
I made pink ones for my daughter and niece.
I gave six away, so we have six for ourselves. The cake does taste wonderfully moist, you just have to supplement the frosting with cream cheese.
Happy Valentine’s Day! (again)