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Beet Red Velvet Cupcakes Experiment

Are you a fan of red velvet cupcakes but find yourself weirded out by how much dye or food coloring it takes to turn them red?  Welcome to my world!  It wasn’t until I read the novel How to Eat a Cupcake that I learned beets were originally used to make these delicious cakes red.  So I set out to find a delicious beet red velvet cupcake recipe.  I definitely failed before succeeding.

First things first, you have to roast the beets to then turn them into a puree.

Beet-Red-Velvet-Cupcakes-Beets

I filled a baking sheet with about a 1/4 to 1/2 of water.  Wash your beets and place them in the water.  Then cover the baking sheet with both parchment paper and foil.  I also read that you could individually wrap each beet in foil, so if you don’t have parchment paper this could be a good alternative.  Bake them at 400 degrees for 90 minutes.

Beet-Red-Velvet-Cupcake-mix

Beet Red Velvet Cupcakes

3/4 C beet puree
1 lemon, for juice
2 eggs, room temperature
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 granulated sugar
3/4 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 tbsp natural cocoa powder (NOT Dutch process)
1/2 cup cultured buttermilk
1 1/2 tsp rice vinegar

Yields 1 dozen cupcakes
Bake at 350 degrees for 20-22 minutes

Once the beets are finished roasting, let them cool completely. Then peel them and chop them into large chunks.  Be prepared that while working with beets you will most likely end up dying your fingers, but luckily it doesn’t last long.  Also, take into consideration the items you use when working with the beets.  Plastics and other materials could be permanently dyed by the juice from the beets.  I tossed the pieces of the beets into my blender and added the juice from my lemon.  It can take several minutes to get them good and mushy.  You can use your food processor, I just don’t have one.  In order to successfully puree the beets I added the juice from my lemon to the blender as well.  And look how great it turned out:

Beet-Red-Velvet-Cupcakes-Beet-Puree

It’s hard to say how many beets you need.  I had one big beet, a medium one and about 4 tiny beets and ended up with at least a cup of beet puree/lemon juice mix.  But I think if you get 3 medium beets you should be good.

In my first attempt making Beet Red Velvet Cupcakes I didn’t let the eggs get to room temperature and this time I did.  In my sand mixer I started with the sugar and butter and made sure they were really mixed together.  Then added my room temperature eggs one at a time.  Once they were completely mixed in I added the beet puree and vanilla.

In a medium bowl mix together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cocoa powder.  In a measuring cup I mixed together the buttermilk and rice vinegar.

Because the mixture in the stand mixer was liquid I added a small amount of the dry mixture.  I actually used a tablespoon to scoop it into the bowl and did two tablespoons at a time.  Once the dry mixture was well blended I added a little of the buttermilk mixture. I continued alternately adding these mixtures until it was all well blended.

I use an ice cream scooper to put the dough in the cupcake liners and filled them pretty full.

Beet-Red-Velvet-Cupcakes-in-liners

Once they were cooked, they came out looking awesome!  The color was the perfect shade of red, I was so excited!

Beet-Red-Velvet-Cupcakes-Cooked

I used Sophistimom’s recipe for the Cream Cheese frosting.  It is light and airy and perfect!  The recipe for the cupcakes was also adapted from her recipe.  To see the original, click here and another great adaptation can be found here.

Beet-Red-Velvet-Cupcakes-Iced

 

Beet-Red-Velvet-Cupcake-Upclose

 

Beet-Red-Velvet-Cupcake-Inside

My taste testers gave these cupcakes a thumbs up!  So excited to have found a great Beet Red Velvet Cupcake Recipe!

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Kate O. Lynch

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