Red Velvet Take Two: Red Handed

I made red velvet cupcakes again. This time, I used a recipe from the Cake Boss himself, Mr. Buddy Valastro. I tried looking the recipe up online, but the one that claimed to be Buddy's recipe was nothing like what was in his cookbook, so I'm not going to post it.

Buddy's recipe called for food coloring gel, rather than plain food coloring. I had a little incident with it. Right before I made the cake I went to my Aunt's (who also happens to be my neighbor. Convenient? Yes.) to borrow Crisco and powdered sugar because I was ill prepared. She told me she had some cake decorating supplies that I could use. She gave me 3 Martha by Mail kits. Remember Martha by Mail days? She did that before she had stuff in K-Mart or any other commercial store. I think the stuff back then was better quality, but hey, it's cheaper now, so I won't complain too much. The kits that my Aunt let me borrow had some really cool stuff in them including gel food coloring in tubes. I decided that it would be easier to squeeze that into the batter than scoop it out of my little pots, so I used it. I snipped the top off and squoze, but the coloring didn't come out of the top. It blew out the side. It was a mess. Lesson learned: Don't use food coloring in a tube that's 10+years old.

It took a few hours to get rid of the pink

So, what's the verdict? Well, it was still a little on the dry side. It also had that funky food coloring after taste. My second attempt went better than the first, but I'm still not sold on them. There are just so many flavors of cake I'd rather have. I'm going to keep trying though. My new goal is to try every red velvet cake I possibly can; Meaning, if there is red velvet on the menu, I have to order it. I will find one that I like and I will recreate it. This is my mantra.

Even though I don't like the flavor, I can't deny that they are beautiful.