I am wanting to make red or pink velvet cupcakes this weekend for my daughters b-day. I have looked around and seen so many variations with mixed reviews I would really like a tried and true recipe that is great!. I trust all you wonderful people's opinions and would appreciate the help.

Thanks in advance!

I use CakeMan Raven's recipe. Make sure you use cake flour and I add an extra tsp of cocoa for my daughters.

Sarah's recipe on this site is very good and gets rave reviews.

Bar none--hands down--no question about it--use this doctored Duncan Hines mix. I did a 6 month search for "red velvet". Tried cupcakes from 4 different, famous bakers, tried 5 different recipes. This is the one.

Courtesy of BlakesCakes from CakeCentral.comDOCTORED RED VELVET CAKE:

1 Duncan Hines Red Velvet Cake Mix
1 box white chocolate (hard to find, try WalMart) or chocolate instant pudding mix
4 eggs
1/2 c. sour cream
1/2 c. buttermilk
1/3 c. vegetable oil
1 tsp. vanilla extract

BlakesCakes: Hand mix all ingredients until incorporated and then mix on medium with a hand mixer for 1:30 to 2:00 minutes. Bake at 325 until a toothpick comes out clean. The cake is tasty and sturdy. I often ice with a 50/50 mixture of homemade buttercream and canned cream cheese icing so that the cake can stay at room temp for long periods.

Scratch baker like me go for Cakeman Raven's with teeny weeny varaitions to suit my taste. Make sure to ONLY use cake flour.

I haven't found a "Boxed" mix yet that tastes like a real red velvet cake.

I PM'd you with the go-to recipe I use. It's a scratch cake but worth the effort.

Cakeman's with a few changes. I think this box mix is the worst for chemical aftertaste. But I never bake anything that isn't from scratch. When my daughter and I were both taking the Wilton courses together, I baked both cakes. I used box mixes for the practice cakes with that Wilton icing on them. No one would eat them and they were thrown away. But I would taste the cake alone. The RV and carrot had the most chemicals.

Thank you all for the replies

I can't seem to find Cakeman's recipe anywhere on this site... Am I missing something?

You can look for Chef Stef's southern red velvet cake recipe on this site as it is exactly the same, but you could also google search cakeman raven's red velvet. I just found a youtube video of cakeman raven making this recipe that was very useful. Good luck!!

Maybe I'm unusual, but I still don't get the popularity of red velvet. I'd rather have good scratch yellow butter cake or a nice dark chocolate cake. Red velvet isn't here or there in my view - it isn't chocolate enough (I know it isn't supposed to be) and all the food coloring in the cake is kind of gross (though I'll put food coloring in fondant - but you can peel that off, right?) Anyway, I've been using the NY Times /Confetti Cakes /Elisa Strauss recipe (you can google it) which I think is pretty good as red velvet goes. Is Cake Man Raven's recipe much different from that? I had heard Cake Man's version had an oily consistency.

Can Cakeman's recipe be used for cupcakes? I've tried other delicious red velvet cake recipes like his for cakes but they fail as cupcakes.