Red/ Pink Velvet Cake


I found this nifty muffin tin at the Thrift Store and I couldn't wait to use it - literally two days later I made these! With Valentine's Day coming up I thought it would be fun to decorate these heart-shaped cupcakes. I used a recipe from Emeril Lagasse because a dessert is not supposed to be healthy, it's supposed to taste good. It was pretty straight-forward as far as the recipe (combine dry ingredients, cream butter and sugar, add a little of this and that), but I underestimated how much food dye I needed. The recipe calls for 2 oz of red food coloring, and there is about .25 oz in the little bottles you get from the store. I would have needed eight of those little bottles to achieve the red color typical of this cake, but on the other hand, it is not the red dye that really matters. In fact, I know some people who refuse to eat red food coloring because it is made from ground up beetles. From the websites I read (below), it appears that FD&C Red #1-15 are all made from this beetle and according to the Spice Place:
Ingredients in McCormick Red Food Color: Water, Propylene Glycol, FD&C Reds 40 & 3 and Propylparaben (as a preservative).
Moral of the Story? If you are vegan, vegetarian, or allegy-prone, know what you are eating!

http://money.aol.com/bw/general/canvas3/_a/whats-in-my-food/20060808141909990001
http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/bugjuice.asp

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