Easy Red Velvet Cupcake is one of my red velvet cupcake recipes that made it through The Great Red Velvet Purge of 2023. Sadly, I had to cut some of the recipes. The reason is that it became frustrating digging through so many different red velvet cakes to find the perfect one. It was hard saying goodbye to posts I’ve had for years and recipes that at one point we liked, but I needed to curate the collection.
Adapted From Martha Stewart
This recipe for Easy Red Velvet Cupcakes made the cut. It’s based on a recipe originally from Martha Stewart, and I like it because it’s very simple and produces cupcakes that are not overly chocolaty, but still have some chocolate flavor. It’s an oil-rich recipe, but red velvet cupcakes typically do have a lot of oil. For extra flavor, you can use a combination of oil and melted butter. The butter adds a little extra flavor, but the cupcakes are still good if you use 100% oil.
Red Velvet Cupcakes Notes
The recipe will give you 12 cupcake, but that's only if you use "normal" size or grocery store type liners. I buy slightly larger cupcake liners online, so I get fewer cupcakes. My favorite size cupcake wrappers are 2 inches at the base and 1 ¾ inches high, so they fit in standard size muffin tins, but hold more batter. If using the larger cupcake wrappers, you’ll need to bake for slightly longer.
Cream Cheese Icing
There are only two frostings I ever use with red velvet, Cream Cheese or Ermine. This recipe uses a cream cheese frosting with a slightly higher proportion of butter than others, making it more stable and a little fluffier than typical cream cheese frosting used on cakes. It also pipes nicely.
More Red Velvet Cupcake Ingredient Notes
This is supposed to be an easy recipe, but I understand that people still have questions, so here's some more info on ingredients. This is based on my personal experience making these over and over.
Flour Type: You can use cake flour or all-purpose as long as the amount weighs 150 grams. All-purpose flour and cake flour have different weights per cup, so if you don't have a scale and need to use all-purpose, just use 1 cup plus another tablespoon of flour rather than 1 ¼ cups to equal 150 grams. When using all-purpose flour, be careful not to overbeat the batter after you've added it. If beating by hand this won't be a problem, but if using an electric mixer do it on the lowest speed possible.
Cocoa Powder: For the cocoa powder, use natural rather than Dutch process. The acidity is probably needed for proper leavening (though that's just a guess in this case), but it's mostly because the flavor of natural is more like what's in traditional red velvet, and the color is lighter and won't muck up the red.
Buttermilk or Powder: You can use regular buttermilk or the equivalent amount of powder and water. Check the label of your powdered buttermilk because some brands differ in the ratio of powder to water. I use Bob's Red Mill which is about 3 ½ teaspoons powder to a little under 4 oz water for ½ cup. I add the buttermilk powder to the dry ingredients and mix the water with the liquid ingredients.
Red Gel or Liquid Color: There are many different brands and viscosities of red food coloring these days. I recommend using a gel and just squeezing in drops until the batter is a beautiful dark red. With regular grocery store type McCormick liquid color, you can get by with as little as 2 teaspoons. Using too much might make the batter too liquid, so don't keep adding it for richer red. Gel or a concentrated paste is better, but liquid is okay too.
More Recipes
Recipe
Easy Red Velvet Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 1 ¼ cups cake flour or 1 cup of all-purpose plus 1 Tablespoon extra flour to make the 150 grams. (150 grams)**
- 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder, natural not Dutch (5 grams)
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¾ cup granulated sugar (150 grams)
- ¾ cup vegetable oil or use 6 T. butter and 6 T. oil
- 1 large egg room temp
- ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon red gel paste or as much as you need for a red hue
- ½ cup buttermilk (114 grams)
- 1 teaspoon vinegar
- ½ tsp baking soda
Cream Cheese Icing
- 4 oz butter, softened unsalted plus a pinch of salt
- 6 oz cream cheese, softened
- 2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
- 2 teaspoons vanilla (use a little more if you love vanilla)
- 1-2 teaspoons lemon juice or to taste (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 C). Line 12 cupcake cups with paper liners.
- Sift flour, salt and cocoa powder into a bowl and set aside.
- With a hand-held electric mixer or a whisk, beat the sugar, oil, egg and vanilla together for about 2 minutes or until pale and light. Beat in the red gel coloring.
- Add the flour mixture and the buttermilk to the batter alternately, stirring by hand and beginning and ending with flour.
- Mix the vinegar and baking soda together in a large cup (mixture will foam up), then stir that into the batter.
- Divide batter evenly among cupcake liners. Bake on center rack for 20 minutes or until cakes spring back when touched. Let cool and make icing.
- Beat butter and cream cheese together. Slowly add powdered sugar and beat until fluffy. Beat in vanilla and lemon juice.
Anna says
Jin, this is a very basic cream cheese icing and it should have been perfect. However, if you are new to making icing or made ingredient substitutions or measured wrong, a way to firm up cream cheese icing is to either add more powdered sugar (which will make it sweeter) or put it in the refrigerator. I think you might have let the cream cheese get too soft or you might have used melted butter. I'm really not sure, but the recipe should work.
Jin says
I use the cream cheese icing recipe, and they turned out too drippy for my cupcakes. Is there anything I can do about it?
Barbara says
Love this in cupcake form, Anna! I seem to be making more muffins and cupcakes than I am cookies!
PastryPrincess says
i'm eating so many cupcakes these days and actually contemplated buying a red velvet one today! 😉 i'll just pretend i'm testing them all for research purposes for my blog, hehe. there's always room for a cupcake, am i right?!
Sweets By Vicky says
I'm conflicted..sometimes I love a good soft cupcake but I realize it probably isn't real cupcake territory. It has to be sutrdy enough to hold it's own. I love the frosting and how you've done it though! And thanks for the heads up on Martha's recipe.
Louise says
Now don't they look delectable, Anna. I really should get my you know what in gear and bake up a batch of these lovelies. Thank you so much for sharing...
Tracy says
I've always made these cupcakes from Bakingbites:
http://bakingbites.com/2005/08/she-wore-blue-velvet-but-ate-red/
They are always devoured and there's NO oil in the recipe.
pumpkinpie says
Does that work out to 1 Tablespoon of oil per cupcake?
Suzy says
I went to a new cupcake bakery today, in Bellevue, KY, and one of the ones I bought was red velvet, but I haven't tried it yet. I did try a dark chocolate with chocolate ganache, which was very nice and cocoa - y, and a pumpkin with cream cheese frosting and cinnamon dusted on top. I still have banana with peanut butter frosting to try (garnished with peanut butter chips), and the red velvet. These were $1.95 each which I thought was pretty reasonable, even for KY. 🙂 Just reporting from the field, ma'am.
Cheryl says
Yum!
Rina says
Aww, thanks Katrina!! Very sweet of you to remember those! I think the mini-chocolate chips helped (but when does the addition of chocolate NOT help?). 🙂
Joanne says
I made these for Valentine's Day and absolutely loved them! If you use a whole bottle of hot pink food coloring instead of red, they turn out super red. It's vibrant.
Katrina says
Best red velvet cupcakes I ever had were Rina's. Get her recipe! 😉
Hi, Rina! I'm not a big cupcake person either, but those were fantastic! I thought they were even still moist and good after travelling home with one!
Pam says
I've also used and liked Paula Deen's version. I substitute butter instead of the oil as I prefer the taste and texture it gives.
dawn says
there is a FABULOUS recipe (and color) red velvet recipe on foodtv.com. it was the one of the 'throwdown w/ flay" well I tried it (the one that flay was up against) and loved it.
Louise says
Try this one -- http://www.cakemanraven.com/recipe.htm I believe there was a Throw Down with Bobby Flay.
barb says
They look fantastic, I like to add coconut to the tops of mine. It seems to go well with it.
Amy says
I love red velvet! I'll give these a try. I have made the Magnolia Bakery ones that are on epicurious, if you want to try those.
ha, I replied to your chocolate chip comment on my blog 🙂