Easy Red Velvet Cupcakes
Watch me make these easy red velvet cupcakes from start to finish!
My red velvet cake recipe is one of the most popular recipes on this blog. Recently I used my red velvet cake recipe to make red velvet cupcakes and wasn’t too thrilled with the texture anymore. (I get bored quick with a lot of things) They were too light and fluffy, yes that’s totally possible.
Great for a cake, not so good for cupcakes baked in paper liners. It could have been a user error since I know so many of you guys have raved about how good of a cupcake that batter makes. If you are content with it then, by all means, continue using that recipe.
Hoooowever, I like my cupcakes to be light, fluffy yet have some density to them so that they don’t tear apart at all when you pull off the paper. I remedied this situation easily with the one-bowl mixing method, reducing the amount of oil and changing the ingredients ever so slightly. I also made sure I didn’t overfill the cupcake liners.
The results: Perfectly soft yet sturdy, super moist and delicious red velvet cupcakes with the perfect “is this is a box cake?” texture and classic, southern red velvet taste.
These red velvet cupcakes are finished off with a super easy 3-ingredient cream cheese frosting and a sprinkling of pecan pieces. Easy, peasy, delicious!
Get the Recipe: Easy Red Velvet Cupckes
Ingredients
- 2 cups sugar
- 3/4 cup vegetable oil
- 2 eggs, room temperature
- 1 cup buttermilk, room temperature
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 oz red food coloring
- 1/2 cup hot water
- 1 teaspoon white distilled vinegar
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
- FROSTING
- 1 8 oz cream cheese, room temperature
- 4 tablespoons butter, softened at room temperature (do not melt)
- 2 cups powdered sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325 F
- In a large bowl mix together sugar and oil until well combined.
- Beat in eggs until mixture is uniform in color.
- Add in buttermilk, vanilla extract and food coloring.
- Mix until well combined.
- Mix in hot water and distilled vinegar.
- Add flour.
- Mix together baking soda, baking powder, salt and add to bowl.
- Add in cocoa powder.
- Mix to combine all ingredients.
- Line a muffin pan with cupcake liners.
- Pour 1/4 cup of batter into each liner.
- Bake to 18-20 minutes or until tops are spongey to the touch. (do not over cook. SEET NOTE*)
- Remove from oven and let cupcakes sit in pan for 5 minutes.
- Place cupcakes on a cooling wrack to finish cooling.
- Make the frosting by creaming together cream cheese and butter. Slowly add in powdered sugar and beat until creamy.
Video
Notes
Best red velvet cake you will ever taste! My favorite!! Thanks for sharing this perfect recipe!
dont know what im doing wrong followed recipe exactly twice, cakes not rising, could there be a problem with the baking powder
Hi suzanne, did you omit any ingredients? The main leavening agents here are vinegar and baking soda (not the baking powder). Make sure your baking soda is fresh. A good way to test the freshness of baking soda is to mix some of it with some vinegar: the mixture should bubble vigorously. Also, once we add baking soda into the batter, it starts to react with the vinegar. We are supposed to put the batter in the oven relatively quickly. If you take too long to mix, you might out-last the baking soda-vinegar reaction and end up with a flat cake. That being said, I spend a good 15 minutes to work out the flour lumps but my cupcakes still rose considerably well. On hindsight, it might be better to mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients (the flour in step 7).
had the same problem… cupcakes were crumby
These came out great, delicious and moist. Thank you for the wonderful recipe.
Do you have any suggestions on how to adapt this recipe to use beets as the natural red color instead of food coloring? Can I simply sub the 1/2 cup hot water with puree beets and omit food coloring? Thanks.
Hi, I have tried this and I’m not sure but u can definitely use beet based food coloring…(I did)
Can u use cup cake recipe to make a whole cake?
pure perfection!! turned out so nice I did it twice
I tried this recipe and the cupcakes turned out to be moist and delicious. Thank you for sharing this recipe
These were yummy… Thanks for the recipe
I made these today they came out amazing….nice and moist rose perfectly and the cream cheese frosting was the perfect touch!! Very easy and simple recipe….thanks for the hook up!!!!!