Red Velvet Cupcakes

My husband and I couldn’t have been raised by more different mothers. His stayed home, taught Sunday school and served homemade yogurt and wheat germ for breakfast. Mine worked long hours, let me stay up to watch Johnny Carson while I was still in elementary school, and served me sugar cereal.



I am too new to parenting to say how much of palette-building is nature or nurture. But from my own childhood, I am somewhat ambivalent. After growing up eating 2-3 bowls of sugar-laden cereal a day, I have grown up to be slim and cavity-free. Most importantly I have a sense of moderation for sweets. I am that person who will eat one bite of cake and need no more. My husband has a voracious sweet tooth. And, don’t think that his wheat germ breakfasts were emblematic of a childhood of sweet deprivation—that is certainly not the case. Soon after meeting my mother-in-law for the first time, I mean hours after meeting a woman who at first seemed very pleasant and kind, she informed me she would not, could not share her desserts. (I should tell you in all other things she is very sharing.) So, for my husband to have a sweet tooth, I am not surprised.



Belle might come to think of King Arthur as a magical fairy who changed her mother from vegetable toting disciplinarian into a cupcake baking sorceress. We received a box of King Arthur Unbleached Flour to test as part of Bloggeraid: Changing the Face of Famine. Belle looks like me--but her sweet tooth is all her father’s. When she says cupcake, she enunciates every syllable and her eyes light up as if she can already taste the sugar on her lips. She loves my experiments with the cake flour.

So, after peach upside down cake and red currant glazed cupcakes, we made red velvet cupcakes using the Canadian Baker recipe. This recipe really made the cake flour sing—they were moist and airy.

So, King Arthur, Belle and her sweet tooth thank you for your cake flour.