• 125 grams of flour,
• ¼ tsp of baking powder,
• ¼ tsp of table salt,
• ½ tsp of baking soda,
• 1 tbsp of good quality cocoa powder,
• 150 grams of powdered sugar,
• 1 egg, at room temperature,
• 1 tsp of vanilla extract,
• ½ cup buttermilk,
• 1 tbsp red food color,
• ½ tsp of freshly squeezed lemon juice,
• 57 grams of vegetable oil
• For Cream Cheese Frosting:
• For the cream cheese frosting, you will need:
• 150 grams of cream cheese (you can try Philadelphia or Amul cream cheese)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract,
• 60 grams powdered sugar or icing sugar,
• 160 ml of good quality whipped cream

Before you begin, pre heat the oven at 180 degrees and line the muffin moulds with paper.

To start with, get all the dry ingredients together, except for sugar and baking soda.

Sieve the flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa powder in a clean dry bowl. Mix the dry ingredients and keep it aside.

With the help of a hand blender or mixer, mix in the powdered sugar and vegetable oil or butter, until pale and creamy. Into this, add the egg and the vanilla extract and mix again.

In a separate bowl, take the buttermilk and add the suggested amount of red food color. If making buttermilk seems to be a challenge, then do not fret. You can get half a cup of milk and squeeze in half a lemon of ½ tsp of distilled vinegar and allow it to stand for a minute.

Now add in the egg and sugar mixture plus the buttermilk mix into the dry ingredients alternately and blend in well. You will have a beautiful red colored batter at your disposal.

Add half a teaspoon of lemon juice and add into the baking soda. This will create fizz, thereby suggesting its addition into the batter immediately. This helps to build in aeration into the cake, which makes it moist.

Pour into the muffin moulds and place it in oven, for around 20 minutes. A toothpick, inserted, should come out clean, when completely baked, or else you can keep it for 2 minutes more.

Take them out and cool them over a wire rack. Now you can start preparing your cream cheese frosting.The Cream Cheese Frosting:

Whip cream and powdered sugar together until stiff and it forms peaks. Into this add the vanilla extract and cream cheese, little by little, so that the cream doesn’t turn runny.

The cream cheese frosting should then be refrigerated for about half an hour, before icing the cupcakes.

The cupcakes looked delightful in their cream cheese frosting. I decided to make them look even more celebratory, with some chocolate sprinkles.

by Pak101.com (few years ago!) / 794 views