Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream cheese frosting (Video Recipe)

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My favorite red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting recipe.  These red velvet cupcakes are light, have the trademark red color with a hint of chocolate flavor and a little tang from the buttermilk.  They are perfectly moist with the most delicious cream cheese frosting

Red Velvet Cupcakes with the best cream cheese frosting {Video Recipe}

When I was working on my home based baking venture The Pink CakeBox, these red velvet cupcakes were the most requested cupcake flavor and I always got a great feedback from whoever received them. Even after I stopped baking for orders, there are a few customers who still come and request these red velvet cupcakes.

I have made this recipe at least a 100 times, if not more and it has never failed me. I do a mix of oil and butter in the batter. The oil makes these red velvet cupcakes moist, and the butter gives that great butter flavor that just oil cakes lack.

The highlight of these cupcakes is of course the cream cheese frosting, which I have perfected over the years. Its not overtly sweet, perfect amount of tang from the cream cheese and frosts well too. The trick to not getting a runny frosting is to make sure you don’t beat the cream cheese too much. That is why I always beat the butter separately to make it light and fluffy first, before adding the slightly beaten cream cheese and then once the cream cheese is added only beat for another minute or so.

Red Velvet Cupcakes with the best cream cheese frosting {Video Recipe}

I know I have posted a recipe for red velvet cupcakes before but for the past couple of years I have been using this recipe, so thought will post the recipe here. Since, its Valentine’s Day on the 14th, I thought these would be perfect for you to make for your loved ones or just for yourself, because why not!

I also did a video for the cupcakes. My friend helped me shoot it and I then edited it. I am planning to do more videos for the blog. Hopefully, between client shoots, I do get time to work on the videos I have planned. Let me know what you think of this one.

If you do make these cupcakes, please make sure you tag me on instagram, facebook or leave a comment here. While the recipe yields 12 cupcakes, it easily doubles to make 24.

Red Velvet Cupcakes Recipe Video from Shumaila Chauhan on Vimeo.

Video: Anubhav Sood

Edit and recipe: MuddyChoux Photography

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Pineapple Coconut Birthday Cake

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The tropical flavors of pineapple and coconut in this pineapple coconut birthday cake are sure to please family and friends and make any occasion special.  

Pineapple Coconut Birthday Cake

I have been facing writers’ block for a while. There is so much going on that I don’t know where to begin. This space has always been snippets of my life and a recipe. While I have recipes to share, its difficult to put down in words what all has been going on. I have been sitting with this post for a couple of days, and since nothing is coming to me, I will start this post by talking about this pineapple coconut birthday cake and leave it at that.

4th July was my dad’s birthday and since I was home for his birthday, I wanted to make a cake for him. I decided on a soft, fluffy coconut cake I had made for one of his previous birthdays, this time with a crushed pineapple filling and a whipped cream cheese frosting.

I worked on the cake recipe when I was working on my home based baking business, The Pink CakeBox. The recipe is adapted from here. The coconut cake is soft and fluffy because it uses a mix of oil and butter, and mildly flavored with coconut extract which gives the cake a lovely coconut flavor. The pairing with pineapple makes it a pina colada sort of cake, which is what I love about this pineapple coconut birthday cake.

A lot of people are not particularly fond of buttercream frosting. While I love buttercream frosting with a rich chocolate cake, for more tropical flavors or fruit based cakes I prefer either a simple whipped cream frosting, or my current favorite this whipped cream cheese frosting which is made from cream cheese and whipping cream. Its light, with a slight richness from the cream cheese. Its not sweet at all, and is great for piping too.

To decorate the cake, I used a small star tip and made 9’s all across the cake. Its a simple technique with beautiful results.

Pineapple Coconut Birthday Cake Pineapple Coconut Birthday Cake

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New York Cheesecake

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New York style baked cheesecake with a rich yet light cream cheese filling and a buttery biscuit crust.

New York Cheesecake

Whenever I think of cheesecake I think about the episode from the TV sitcom Friends where Rachel and Chandler discover the most luscious and creamy cheesecake they have eaten. And ever since that episode, I have wanted to get my hands on a cheesecake that would make me feel how they feel while eating a piece of that cheesecake.

The recipe that I am sharing today is my answer to that episode. The recipe yields a baked cheesecake that has a rich yet light cream cheese filling. I have made this recipe a couple of times now. Each time I have made it for guests, and after baking and letting it cool, I never found time to photograph it, even though it always came out really good. Its good that I didn’t photograph it then because the more I made it the more I gathered on tips and tricks that will help you get the perfect creamy baked New york cheesecake.

New York Cheesecake

New York Cheesecake

The original recipe doesn’t have a crust, but my mom likes crusts, and I have realized so do a lot of other people. Graham crackers are not easily available in India. While traditionally, one would use graham crackers in crust, digestive cookies are a good substitute for using in cheesecake crusts In India, you get McVities digestive cookies which can be used to make the cheesecake crust. I sometimes like to mix in a packet of Unibic’s Honey Oatmeal digestive cookies as well and am always happy with the results.

The recipe is adapted from here and I am so grateful for Katy to have posted it. The original recipe as is was perfect, but required a little tweaking to suit my and my family’s liking.

A few tips I have learnt from the original post (do check it out) as well as baking it a couple of times now, is to make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature. It is very important to keep that in mind if you want a smooth, creamy filling. Although its a vanilla cheesecake, I like the slight tang from lemon and recommend you using both the lemon zest and lemon juice. A 2-hour bake in my oven gives the perfect texture to the cheesecake. Cooking in a bain-marie helps the filling cook slowly and evenly, yielding a creamy cheesecake.

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