Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese icing and hand piped Chocolate decorations

I've always wanted to make red velvet cupcakes. My brain was on high gear for weeks leading up to the royal wedding weekend and was researching on what was most possibly the best combination of ingredients needed to make it. But instead of having to rely on a recipe, I came up with an adapted one from an existing cake recipe. The decorations were also inspired from photos I saw of other cupcake decorations. So here's what went in:

Ingredients:

Cake batter:

300gms self raising flour

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

15gms cocoa powder

250ml whole milk

1tbsp red wine vinegar

200gms golden caster sugar

100gms butter - softened

2 eggs

1 1/2 bottles of red food colouring

Icing:

300gms cream / soft cheese

400gms icing sugar

110gms unsalted butter

2tsps vanilla essence

Chocolate decoration:

100gms dark chocolate

200gms milk chocolate

Method:

1. Crank up your oven to 200 Degrees first to warm it up. Then prepare the cake batter.
2. Firstly pop into the microwave for 30 secs to soften the butter. While waiting for that, sift the flour, cocoa powder and bicarbonate of soda together. Then mix the milk with the red wine vinegar together.
3. Beat the sugar and softened butter until light and fluffy before beating the eggs one by one. Then slowly add the flour mixture and milk mixture in batches til fully combined. Then stir in the red food colouring. It will turn the mixture burgundy like in colour.
4. In prepared muffin trays with muffin cups, spoon in the mixture and bake for 15 to 18 minutes depending. Reduce the oven to around 180 Degrees when baking the cupcakes. (The cake batter would make up to 27 cupcakes)
5. While waiting for the cakes to bake, prepare the icing. Firstly beat the butter and cream together before adding the icing sugar slowly to combine it. Lastly add in the vanilla essence. Beat a further 5 minutes to add air in. Then pour into an air tight container and stick it in the fridge.
6. When cupcakes are baked, let it rest and cool down. While waiting, prepare the chocolate deco. Firstly melt both chocolate types in a bain marie (small pot with water and a heatproof bowl on top). Be sure not to melt it for too long as then the chocolate would split from its oils and have a weird sheen to it. Not what you want.
7. Then let it cool down for about 30 to 45 minutes and you'll see it slowly firming up but still running. Then in a piping bag with a normal nozzle, pour in the chocolate mixture. Prepare a baking pan with a greaseproof paper to pipe the chocolate deco on. Then pipe whatever designs you can think off - buttons, hearts, crescents, stars, little dots... 
8. When all three elements have cooled down - icing, chocolate decoration (hardened) and cupcakes are fully rested, then you can assemble! This is the fun part. The easiest to ice the cupcakes is to pipe the icing on the top. Then add some chocolate decoration with some semi-prepared sugar icing stars. 

Here's some other views of the cupcakes:

The party i took the cupcakes to devoured it. And it wasn't as difficult as it looked to be! So have fun baking!

Jap Chae next,

The Innovative Baker