Old Glory...in Cupcake Form.

My oldest Samantha has been asking to bake something lately, so I decided to takes the opportunity to make some colorful cupcakes. I have never really liked making red velvet cake because it requires so much red food coloring. But since July 4th seems right around the corner, I thought I would have fun and play with a red velvet recipe to make some patriotic desserts.

So the recipe I used for my cupcakes was really easy. I found it on the Just a Pinch Recipe Club website. Here is the recipe as it appears on the site.

Red Velvet Cake

1/2 c crisco
1 1/2 c sugar
2 oz red cake coloring ( 4 bottles)
2 egg
1 tsp soda
1 Tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp salt
1 c buttermilk
2 1/4 c cake flour sifted
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tbsp vingar

Cream shortening , sugar and egg. Make paste of the coloring and the cocoa and add to the mixture. Add flour, salt, milk and vanilla, beating with mixer. By hand fold in vinegar and soda. Bake in 3-8" pans- bake at 350 for 30 min. let cool before icing.

Now I generally don't bake with shortening, but I have nothing against it. I just grew up using butter and margarine. Thankfully I had some Crisco on hand, so I used it. I also creamed the shortening and sugar by itself first, then added the egg. At first I didn't add the cocoa because I wanted to keep my batter white. I divided the cocoa amount into thirds, and that when I added the colors.
So here are my three batters. After I divided the batter into three parts, I add the cocoa to the bowls for the blue and red layers. I did not use the amount of color the recipe called for, I kind of eyed my amount. I used AmeriColor Super Red and Navy Blue gel colors to get my shades.
I started layering the batters by putting about 2 ounces using a scoop...blue first.
Then the white...
And topped it off with the red cake batter.
I was really please with the tops on theses cupcakes and I loved how the colors stayed true during baking.
Topped with some cream cheese icing and red, white and blue sprinkles, the cupcake is complete.
Loving the layers and ready to make them again for the 4th!