WWBFD?: Terri Wahl's Red Velvet Cupcakes

For the first installment of WWBFD?, I wanted to cover one of the recipes from Throwdown! that's not Bobby Flay's. It's my way of easing myself into the project, and I have to tell you, I think I may have chosen the most delicious starting point: Terri Wahl's Red Velvet Cupcakes.

This recipe is pretty intense--when all is said and done, there's enough batter for 12 jumbo cupcakes (or 24 regular cupcakes, or 48 miniature cupcakes, or two 9x13 cakes). It calls for the equivalent of an entire one-ounce bottle of red food coloring. There's a whole pound of powdered sugar in the frosting. The end result is worth all the work.

At first, the batter looks more like ketchup than cupcakes. Since this was my first experience with Red Velvet (seriously, I'd never had it before), I was somewhat alarmed, but a taste test proved satisfactory.

The whole experiment ended well, and the cupcakes were topped with cream cheese frosting, like so:

The recipes for both the batter and the frosting are on page 87 in the Throwdown! Should you choose to tackle these cupcakes as a project, I guarantee you'll love the results.

-Cate-