Making Betty Crocker Red Velvet Cupcakes

Despite having heard of them, I'd never tried a Red Velvet Cupcake before so I couldn't resist grabbing a box of Betty Crocker Red Velvet Cupcake Mix when I saw it in our local discount store.

Pierre was my enthusiastic sous-chef for the day !

Inside the box, you get a pack of cake mix, a pack of icing mix, some chocolate sprinkles and some slightly squished cake cases.

You need to add two eggs, 30ml vegetable oil and 60ml water - Juliette appeared at this point because she wanted to help breaking the eggs.

You don't really need an electric whisk but it was a special request from Pierre ! It comes out very red - I'm glad this was a kit because I'd have thought I'd overdone the food colouring if I was making it myself !

After about 15 minutes in the oven, they were firm and springy and had remained a nice deep red colour.

On to the icing. Now this was user fail on my part. Because the instructions were in Spanish, I misunderstood them and thought I was supposed to add WATER whereas it should have been BUTTER. This resulted in a runny icing that was so sweet it made my jaws ache ! I turned it around by whisking in 250g of unsweetened marscapone which made a really nice icing actually !

Pierre added the sprinkles and they were ready to eat. They were very nice - soft and fluffy with just the right amount of sweetness. I'll have to have a go at making them from scratch next time.