She Wore Blue (Red) Velvet, oh oh...

Blue Velvet was my dog Charlie's favourite song. He has such good taste. I imagine he would have stretched to red velvet had he become aware of the Red Velvet cupcake from the Hummingbird Bakery. These are the legendary red and white cupcakes from Notting Hill's most over the top and expensive bakery and purveyors of all American baked goods. Jaimie was given the cookbook for Christmas, so I decided to tackle these infamous ruby jewels.

Red Velvet's are essentially chocolate cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting. These days a quite significant quantity of red food colouring is added to achieve that beautiful red tinge, however in the olden days cocoa powder was apparently much lighter in appearance, giving the cupcakes their famous red colouring.

Red food colouring or not, they tasted great. I took them to my friend James' for Sunday lunch as a little treat. So to the recipe:

For 24 cupcakes you will need

500g plain flour

165g unsalted butter, at room temperature

500g caster sugar

3 large eggs

6 tbsp red food colouring

3 tbsp cocoa powder

1 and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 and 1/2 tsp salt

330ml full fat milk

1 and 1/2 tsp red wine vinegar

1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 180C/gas mark 4. In a small bowl, sift the plain flour. Set aside. In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy, about three minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Whisk together the red food colouring, unsweetened cocoa powder and vanilla. Add to the batter and beat well.

Stir the salt in with the buttermilk and add to the batter in three parts, ­alternating with flour. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are fully incorporated, but make sure you do not overbeat.

In a small bowl, stir together the cider vinegar and baking soda and add to the batter and mix well.

Divide the mixture into cases, then bake each tray of cakes for 20 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean.

Next to the cream cheese frosting. Which to be honest, I could eat on its own. So for that you will need:

125g cream cheese, come on we all know its Philadelphia

250g icing sugar, sifted

90g unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

This couldn't be easier, all you need to do is to combine all these ingredients in either a food processor or by hand. I did it by hand, it didn't take that long at all. And it was lovely. When the cupcakes are fully cooled apply a generous layer of the cream cheese frosting to the top. NICE.

Here is the finished article (I've got my camera back now, so the photos are loads better!)

So I transported them all around London, up to Columbia Road flower market, and then off to Fulham for Sunday lunch with James. Thanks for a lovely afternoon Mr Arkoulis...