Knowing I am a chronic cupcake baker, the co-workers of both myself and Mr. Monster have become accustomed to being taste-testers of my attempts (experiments, failures). Thus, one day in January, Mr. Monster’s co-worker asked if I would be willing to make red velvet cupcakes for her son’s birthday. And the kicker: she would even pay me! My first paying cupcake gig, sweet.

The theme for the birthday was science (I saw the invitations she had hand-made to look like laboratory coats, really amazing and way craftier than I could ever be), so Mr. Monster and I went back and forth about how to top the cupcake. Lab coats? Beakers? It was a head-scratcher. Finally, Mr. Monster exclaimed “atom symbols” and we had a ta da moment.

I thought the best approach would be to have cupcake toppers on toothpicks, so I decided to make atom symbols using white chocolate. First, I printed out a page of large symbols and taped it to a baking sheet, then taped a piece of parchment paper on top.

The night before the birthday party, I melted white chocolate in the microwave and then used a ziploc bag with a corner snipped off to pipe the shapes. I followed the pattern I printed (for the most part) and stuck a toothpick at the bottom of each piece.   Once I filled the sheet, I popped it in the refrigerator to harden; then I oh so carefully removed each one from the parchment paper and placed all of them in a tupperware in the refrigerator for safekeeping.

The next morning I prepared the red velvet batter, based on a recipe from Paula Deen that I had tweaked a bit, and popped it in the oven. Eighteen minutes later, I had these babies:

While the cupcakes cooled, I made the cream cheese frosting, then placed it in the refrigerator to chill and reach a decent (ever elusive) piping consistency. Because I didn’t have a large round tip, I instead used a gallon ziploc bag with a large bit of the corner cut off, and I piped the frosting in swirls.

With the toppers added, our scientific experiment was complete. The funny thing was, once I put the topper on and looked at it, I realized, “They look like rounded star of Davids, oh noes!” Ah well, it worked on a couple of levels, since the birthday boy happened to be half-Jewish. Behold, one-of-a-kind red velvet atomic star of David cupcakes:

Red Velvet Cupcakes
(yields 24 cupcakes)

Dry Ingredients:
2 ½ c. (290g) cake flour
1 tbsp (5g) cocoa powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Wet Ingredients:
½ c. (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
½ c. vegetable oil
1 ½ c. (300g) granulated sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 c. buttermilk, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp white vinegar
2 oz. red food coloring

In a medium bowl, sift together the cake flour, cocoa powder, salt, and baking soda, mixing well using a whisk.

In a mixer bowl, cream the butter and sugar together on medium speed, scraping down the bowl occasionally. Add the vegetable oil.

Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition. Add the buttermilk, vanilla extract, white vinegar, and red food coloring and mix until well-integrated.

Add the dry ingredients and mix together just until combined.

Place liners in the muffin tin. Put in 1/3 c. batter in each liner (so the cup is 3/4 full). Bake for 13 minutes, rotate tins, and bake for an additional 5 minutes, or until done (use a toothpick!). Leave the cupcakes in the tin for five minutes, then remove and let them cool on a baking rack.

Whenever I make this recipe, I always use both the buttermilk and vinegar since that’s what Ms. Deen does, although I think it’s a bit of an overkill. The buttermilk already has the tang and the acid you want; vinegar is typically used with regular milk as a substitute for buttermilk. So, I bet if you eliminated the vinegar from the recipe you couldn’t tell the difference. As a matter of fact, when I eat one of my red velvet cupcakes, I always detect an odd aftertaste which apparently only I seem to notice (given my delicate and refined palate, ha); I wouldn’t be surprised if the vinegar had something to do with it.

Cream Cheese Frosting

½ c. (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
½ lb (8 oz.) cream cheese, softened
½ tsp. vanilla extract
2 c. (240 g) sifted confectioner’s sugar

In a mixer bowl, cream butter and cream cheese together, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Add the vanilla extract.

Add the sugar, about half a cup at a time, again scraping down the sides of the bowl. Refrigerate until frosting reaches piping consistency.

This is my standard cream cheese frosting, but I’m not especially pleased with how it holds up for piping, so I’m still searching for that perfect recipe. The snickerdoodle cupcake has a frosting that seems to hold up a bit better, due to the addition of white chocolate.