Eggless Red Velvet Cupcakes ~ Natural Coloring!!!

I have loved participating in Home Baker's Challenge ever since the event has begun. Starting from the pizza, it has been a lovely experience. Barring two challenges, I have been able to participate in all of them and have loved the feeling. I love challenges when they suggest recipes that have been on my to-do list from long and I make them to be able to stash it off from my ever increasing list!!!

This month's challenge is being hosted by the lovely Shazzy from Malaysia, who blogs at "He Chops, She Cooks". Her blog was previously known as "Cooking with Shazzy" and she has previously guest posted for my blog as well. Being an established home baker in her own way, she hosted a very interesting challenge this month - the Red Velvet cakes and cookies. Now Red Velvet is such a beautiful name for an equally stunning looking dessert!!! The red cakes intermixed with white cheese frosting is just a beauty to watch and can literally dance on the tastebuds. As usual, I have been wanting to make these for quite some time and I tried to stick to the recipes on her provided list. However, the quantity of coloring gel used to get the red color was really worrying me. I somehow avoid the usage of colors in my food. Usage is small forms may not cause any harm, but then I knew that if I buy a bottle of red color, I would definitely not use it again. But then I didn't want to let go without participating in the challenges. 

That was the time when Nimmy posted this recipe on her blog. I was so excited about making it, because it was eggless, butterless and used beetroots to give the red color to the cake. Being a totally guilt conscious recipe, I decided to follow it to participate in this challenge. And I was so glad I did - it was a totally lovely soft cupcakes, with no signs of beets whatsoever. When I was mixing, and Rasha saw me putting in the beetroot puree, she was like, "Ummi, beetroot in cake? I don't want to eat it!!!" After baking it, we had to go out, so I gave her the cake the next day. She munched it and came back for a couple of more servings. Later, I asked her, "you know what you ate? The cake ummi made yesterday with the beetroots!" She gave me a shocked expression... hehe...

Eggless Red Velvet Cupcakes 
Recipe from here
Makes 12


Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt 
4 tsp cocoa powder
3/4 cup beetroot puree
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup milk, mixed with 1 tbsp vinegar, set aside for 5 minutes
1 tsp vanilla 

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Line a muffin pan and set aside. 

Sieve the dry ingredients together in a bowl. In another bowl, add the oil, sugar and milk set with vinegar and whisk well till combined. Add the beetroot puree and mix well along with the vanilla. Slowly add in the dry ingredients and whisk till combined without lumps. 

Pour into each muffin mould upto 3/4 volume. Bake for 20-25 minutes till a tester comes out clean - I baked for 25 minutes. Cool on a rack. 

Notes:

1. For making beetroot puree, pressure cook one large or two medium beetroots for 3 whistles till done. Allow to cool, peel off the skin, chop into large pieces and puree in your blender till fine. Add 3-4 tbsp water if necessary. Use 3/4 cup from this puree. I got almost 1 1/2 cup of puree from blending one fairly big beetroot. 
2. Instead of milk+vinegar, you can use whisked yogurt. If I knew it, I would have definitely used yogurt!!! Hehe....

Pssst... I seriously don't feel nice about that picture. After having it ourselves and distributing it to a close friend, I had only this lone cupcake to photograph and my filthy mood did not make things better. So managed this with my mobile camera...

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