Nariah loves The Food Network, and she is always trying to mimic Chopped and Cupcake Wars with Toya. After getting back from traveling for work I promised her I’d make some cupcakes with her before my next trip, but we had to do whatever flavor she came up with.
“I want to make red velvet cupcakes daddy”
“Well you know… they have chocolate in them right?”
“Yes, I know daddy, but we can make them without chocolate right? I want make it crunchy and then chewy on the inside and then……………. with some mint!”
“Crunchy, chewy, minty? That’s…. interesting…..”
“We can put caramel or something in the middle for a surprise!”
“What about these Wether’s Original Chewy candies?”
“Oooh, yeah daddy! And we can put some mint in the icing!”
Now, I had really planned to make the velvets from scratch, and substitute something funky for the cocoa. While in Trader Joe’s, I saw Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla cake mix. “Oh my!” I said to self. Yep, I found our “base” for the red velvet cupcakes.
In case you can’t make out the ingredients in Nariah’s video below, (she wanted to tape it like we were on cupcake wars with baby brother and mommy being the judges) they are :
1 stick of butter/margarine melted
1 cup of milk
2 eggs
some vanilla
1 package of Trader Joe’s Madagascar Vanilla cake mix
1 teaspn (or more to your liking) red food coloring drops
Werther’s Original Chewy or other caramel cut into 1cm sized cubes.
(After this initial trial, I would suggest for the future to put the caramels inside it midway through cooking)
And yes… these cupcakes were off the hook!