Easy & Fabulous Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing

Viewing a cupcake throwdown competition between Terrie, a Califormia cupcake baker / owner of Auntie Em's and Bobby Flay on the Food Network's Throwndown series left me with with a lingering lust for a red velvet cupcake. The rich, shocking-red cake is extra tender with its classic tangy cream cheese frosting. In the early days, Red Velvet cakes often contained beets during the sugar-rationing days of World War II when it was still called Waldorf-Astoria Cake. Red velvet cake  disappeared from existence in the 70's right along with red M&M's, when the health scares about red food dye #2's connection to cancer caused red food items to be yanked from shelves. Fortunately for the world, other red dyes were developed and a decade or two later red foods safely reappeared in full force- and this classic cake is  one of the best uses.

Back to the throwdown - the cupcake lady pretty much just bakes three types of cupcakes- coconut, carrot, and red velvet. They sell for about $5 each and are gigando.  I need to watch again to remind myself about her icing technique- I do recall she used a big food scoop to plop the rich icing on the cupcake - at least as much frosting as the cupcake itself. So don't  skimp on the icing- blob it in the middle of the cupcake and pull down to the edges instead of trying to build the icing high. I used a 1/3 measuring cup to scoop it onto the cupcakes.

This tempting spectacle flitted through my brain now and then for a few weeks until I happened upon  a recipe in Woman's World magazine about ways to surrepticiously slide veggies into kids diets. Lo and behold - a Red Velvet cake recipe using a red velvet cake mix and canned beets! I'd Googled the Cupcake Lady's recipe and knew I wasn't going to make her 12-ingredient cupcakes from scratch.  Here was the answer,a shortcut -- more my level of baking effort.  It's FAB-YOO-LUS! The beets give the cake a wonderful, moist, texture and are unidentifiable as beets.

I did use Auntie Em's ultra-rich cream cheese frosting recipe, and managed to burn up my hand mixer beating it, so you might consider using a stand mixer instead if you make multiple quantities....the recipe quadrupled makes too much to fit into a standard-size food processor, though I may try it in two batches.

So here goes: it's really a quick  recipe now that I am done jabbering about how wonderful it is:

For the cupcakes: In a blender or food processor, puree one can of beets & juice. Add to one box of red velvet cake mix in place of the water. Use the quantity of eggs and oil the box calls for, and mix as directed. Pour into cupcake papers and bake according to directions. I made standard-sized cupcakes, mostly because I dont have cupcake papers for gigantic cupcakes. I filled the cups pretty full- you want these to be tall. Bake as directed, & cool.

For the frosting,  which is a level or six above most cream cheese icing,  cream 2 sticks real butter and 12 oz cream cheese at  room temperature -- maybe your mixer won't croak like mine did when I made a quadruple batch . Beat together til smooth, then slowly add 1 lb powdered sugar and 1 TB vanilla. Frost cupcakes generously. Terrie sifts her sugar; I didn't bother. The Woman's World recipe garnished theirs with silver dragees; Terrie uses a bit of orange zest.......I used a dusting of opal sanding sugar for an iridescent sparkle. But all those are just gilding the lily.....they really don't need a garnish at all .

If you'd like to try the original cupcake recipe you can find it on the Food Network site. http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_36737,00.html

And if you care about the nutritional qualities, the beets add sweetness, texture, and a healthy dose of vitamin C and folate..