What's Black and White and Red Velvet All Over?

So, here's a story for all of you.  The other day, I really wanted a red velvet cupcake.  I'm not sure why, since I can generally take or leave red velvet, but I really wanted one.  However, there was no good time to go get a red velvet cupcake, so I decided the only thing to do was to make one.  However, what was I going to do with 2 dozen red velvet cupcakes?  Even I can't eat that many cupcakes!

Then I realized...I had a staff meeting yesterday!  The teachers would eat them!    My religious school teachers are amazing in many ways, including in their ability to consume large quantities of food.  Since I was making them stay until after 8pm at a meeting, I thought these cupcakes might buy me some good will.

It took me a long time to figure out which red velvet recipe to use.  Many on the internet are very similar and I could not quite figure out what the differences was between different recipes.  However, in the end I decided to go with the recipe from Baked, because I have liked other things I made from the cookbook and it didn't have a neon-red color like some of the recipes I saw online.  In fact, the Baked recipe specifically says that it is not designed to turn anyone's mouth red.

This was a fairly simple recipe, although it requires a number of special ingredients including cake flour (which, thanks to Simple Girl, I now know is in a box and was easily found in the grocery store), red gel food coloring (not the liquid kind) and distilled white vinegar.  I died some part of my kitchen red while making these cupcakes, but I was able to get it out pretty quickly.  This recipe made such beautiful batter -- very pretty red color and shiny -- and baked up in about 25 minutes.

I frosted it with Martha Stewart's cream cheese frosting, although I used less butter and a little more cream cheese than she calls for.  Delicious!

The cake recipe can be found here.

The frosting is here.