Red velvet mini cupcakes

Co-workers seem to be the perfect guinea pigs when you're trying out new recipes (who doesn't get those 3 p.m. snack cravings when they're cooped up in an office?), but sometimes, especially in the industry I work in, they're too worried about their diet to indulge. I have an excellent solution: mini cupcakes!
This week I converted my favourite cupcake recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook to suit mini cupcakes, and it was a success with my workmates.
For those of you not yet familiar with it, red velvet cake has a mild chocolatey flavour (thanks to a bit of cocoa powder), and is topped off with lashings of cream cheese frosting. Yum! And red food colouring gives the cake a distictive blood-red hue, which looks absolutely divine against the white frosting.
When you convert a normal cupcake recipe to suit mini cupcakes, you must lower the temperature of the oven as well as shorten the cooking time. Think about it: mini cupcakes are about one quarter the size of regular ones, and there's nothing worse than a dried-out cupcake. I baked these babies at 160°C for about 12 minutes. I'd recommend checking on them at 10 minutes by doing the skewer test: if a skewer poked into the cupcake comes out clean, you're done.

Red velvet mini cupcakes (recipe adapted from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook)

Ingredients
60 g unsalted butter (at room temperature)
150 g caster sugar
1 egg
10 g cocoa powder
20 ml red food colouring
½ tsp vanilla extract
120 ml buttermilk
150 g plain flour
½ tsp salt
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1½ tsp white wine vinegar

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160°C and place cupcake cases in cupcake trays.
2. Beat butter and the sugar on medium speed in an electric mixer until light, fluffy and well combined. Crank up the mixer to high speed, slowly add the egg and beat until everything is well incorporated.
3. In a separate bowl, mix the cocoa powder, red food colouring and vanilla extract with a teaspoon to create a thick, dark paste. Add to the butter mixture and mix thoroughly.
4. Turn the mixer down to slow speed and slowly pour in half the buttermilk. Beat until well mixed, then add half the flour, and beat until everything is well incorporated. Repeat this process until all the buttermilk and flour have been added.
5. Turn the mixer back up to high speed and beat until mixture is smooth. Turn the mixer down to low speed and add the salt, bicarbonate of soda and vinegar. Beat until well mixed, then turn up the speed again and beat for a couple more minutes.
6. Fill the cupcake cases to halfway (or slightly more, but not much more!) and bake in the preheated oven for about 12 minutes. The sponge should bounce back when touched. Leave cupcakes in trays to cool slightly before turning out onto a cooling rack. Cool cupcakes completely before frosting.

Makes 36 mini cupcakes.

Cream cheese frosting (recipe adapted from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook)

Ingredients
300 g icing sugar, sifted
50 g unsalted butter, at room temperature
125 g cream cheese, cold

Method

1. Beat the icing sugar and butter together in an electric mixer on medium-slow speed until well combined.
2. Add the cream cheese in one go and beat until it is completely incorporated. Turn the mixer up to medium-high speed. Continue beating until the frosting is light and fluffy (at least 5 minutes). Do not overbeat, as it can quickly become runny.

Tips

• It's best to have your butter at room temperature if you intend to cream it, like in this recipe.
• The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook recommends Dr Oetker Red Food Colouring, but I use any old red food colouring. Like me, you may find you don't need to use 20 ml of colouring. I add a few drops of water to the paste instead to get it to a nice consistency.
• Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula a few times during the cupcake-making process to ensure ingredients (especially the coloured paste) are well mixed in.
• I use mini-muffin trays and mini-muffin cases.
• If you fill the cases much more than halfway, they will overflow, and you'll end up with mushroom-shaped cupcakes. Trust me - I've done it. Bigger is not necessarily more beautiful!