5 Best Red Velvet Cupcake Recipes to Try at Home in 2025

Anyone who loves a dessert loves red velvet cupcakes. Red velvet cupcakes are not only delicious but also visually appealing. This makes them an irresistible dessert for people of every age. Being bold with its red color, it is still a moist and light flavor dessert.

These cupcakes are suitable for every occasion, whether a wedding, birthday or a simple get-together. Making these cupcakes at home is like achieving expertise because you have to attain that velvety texture, cocoa flavor and, most importantly, its red color.

Do You Know Why It Is Called a Red Velvet Cupcake?

The red color is not intentional; instead, it is the result of a chemical reaction between two ingredients of these cupcakes when this recipe was first made: two acidic ingredients, buttermilk and vinegar, reaction with natural cocoa, making a reddish-brown color of those cupcakes.

This color is like a tradition that is compulsory to achieve when making red velvet cupcakes. Who will believe they are red velvet cupcakes if there is no red color? Initially, the cupcakes were red by adding natural dye beet juice. This gave the cupcakes a fresh red color. But later on, especially these days, people use food colors, also known as artificial dyes.

What is Red Velvet?

The name red velvet has two meanings related to the cupcake. The first word, red, comes from the chemical reaction given above, and the second, velvet, comes from the texture of a cupcake. A red velvet cupcake is velvety in texture because mixing ingredients like vanilla and cocoa is so rich and smooth.

However, the cupcake does not have a strong cocoa flavor because of its moderate usage. Balancing these two ingredients is most important to achieve the right color and flavor. If you ever find a recipe without buttermilk, vanilla or cocoa, you don’t need it because these ingredients are the essence of red velvet cupcakes.

Whoever likes to bake or wants to bake red velvet cupcakes for someone special, I am sharing five recipes that you can make in the comfort of your home:

Red Velvet Cupcakes Recipe 1:

I have been using this red velvet recipe for more than six years, and everybody loves my cupcakes. A few of my friends even made this recipe for their families, which made them super chefs in their homes.

This is a short recipe for a first try and best results. This recipe will make four cupcakes and includes;

• Oil such as vegetable oil is best for this recipe because it is neutral. However, you can also use avocado, grappled, and canola. Just make sure not to use coconut oil if you want the right texture.
• Sugar such as granulated sugar is best for this.
• The next ingredient is buttermilk because it is low in fat. The best option is to buy one from the store because homemade buttermilk has vinegar in it, which will affect the vinegar, which we will add later in the recipe.
• One egg white is perfect for this recipe of four cupcakes.
• The total quantity of red food coloring, and if you are using gel coloring, you can use half because the concentration of color is higher in gels.
• White vinegar splash in small quantities helps make the cupcakes fluffy and rise in the oven.
• Two teaspoons of cocoa powder give these cupcakes a perfect chocolatey hint.
• Other ingredients include vanilla extract
• Salt
• Flour
• And baking soda

Method:

Preheat the oven to 350. While preheating the oven, prepare your muffin/cupcake tray and place liners in each cup. After that, take a medium bowl and add oil, egg white, sugar, buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla and red food color. Beat all these ingredients at medium speed with an electric mixer for one minute.

Add flour, baking soda, and cocoa powder for dry ingredients and whisk them together. Add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix slowly with the mixer while adding. Fill each cupcake liner and bake for about twenty-two minutes. Check with a cake tester before taking it out. Let them cool and serve with cream cheese frosting.

Red Velvet Cupcakes Recipe 2:

This recipe is for the ones who want to make the perfect red velvet cupcake because only some red velvet recipes have the right red color and velvety texture. To make super moist and fluffy red velvet cupcakes, you need the following ingredients:

• Unsweetened cocoa powder to give that minimal chocolatey flavor.
• Vinegar is essential for the color, but you can also use apple cider vinegar in this recipe if you don’t have it.
• Buttermilk is also needed.
• For your cupcakes to rise, you need baking soda.
• The final ingredient is red food coloring of about two tablespoons, and in gel form, you can use five to six drops.

Method:

For this recipe, preheat your oven to 350 degrees before placing your cupcake liners in the cupcake tin. Mix sugar and cream to form a smooth texture and beat slowly while adding an egg.

Take a new bowl and add vanilla extract, red color, and cocoa powder together. Mix all these dry ingredients with the wet batter in the first bowl. Add buttermilk, salt, baking soda, vinegar and flour while keeping the speed low and beat on high speed later to get the desired smooth texture. Pour in the cupcake liners and bake for twenty minutes. Ready to serve!

Red Velvet Cupcakes Recipe 3:

In this recipe, you don’t need any eggs because this is an eggless red velvet cupcake recipe. You can make the entire batter in one bowl. To make this recipe, you need:

• One tablespoon of butter
• One and a half cups of all-purpose flour
• One cup sugar
• Quarter cup of cocoa powder; make sure it is unsweetened.
• One teaspoon of baking soda
• Half a teaspoon of salt
• One cup low fat buttermilk
• One teaspoon of vanilla
• Two teaspoons of food coloring
• One tablespoon of lemon juice, or you can also use vinegar in distilled form. 

Method:

Keep your oven to 350 degrees for preheat, and add muffin liners. Mix dry ingredients separately and then add liquids to the dry ingredients bowl. Mix everything with a spatula, bake for twenty minutes, and then serve.

Red Velvet Cupcake Recipe 4:

To make chocolatey red velvet cupcakes, follow this recipe because it is more about the flavor than the color. This is a unique recipe, so follow every step carefully. Ingredients are given below:

• Cake flour is the first ingredient to give the cake a super soft texture.
• This recipe uses Dutch-processed cocoa to give a better color than usual cupcakes.
• You need buttermilk, but if not available, you can kefir. Make sure you’re using Kefir instead of something else if you don’t have buttermilk.
• Use unsalted butter and keep it at room temperature before using.
• For salt, you need sea salt.
• One egg for this recipe is enough.
• Use gel food coloring because you don’t need to add water to food color powder.
• Use natural vanilla paste of vanilla extract.

Method:

To start this recipe, mix sugar with salt, vanilla and butter. Beat these till you achieve the texture of light and fluffy batter. For the next two minutes, beat an egg in this mixture. Keep using your spatula to scrape the batter and bind it back to beating.

Add cocoa powder, baking soda, and cake flour to this batter and mix well. Add hot water with buttermilk and beat until you achieve a smooth texture for the final beating. This batter will make about eight red velvet cupcakes. Bake this for twenty minutes and then serve.

Red Velvet Cupcake Recipe 5:

If you still need a better recipe, bake this next one. For this final recipe, you need the following ingredients:

• All-purpose flour
• Cocoa powder
• Buttermilk
• Butter
• Vanilla extract
• Sugar
• Baking soda
• Salt

Method:

You can bake around sixteen cupcakes with this recipe. Before you start, put your oven on preheat to 350 Fahrenheit. Mix flour, baking powder, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt and sugar in a bowl. Add butter to this mixture. Mix your wet ingredients separately by adding eggs, buttermilk, vanilla and red coloring. Whisk all ingredients together and bake for fifteen minutes.

Cream Cheese for Red Velvet Cupcakes:

Every red velvet cupcake needs its cream cheese frosting. You can use this frosting for any red velvet cupcake recipe. You only need five ingredients to get that perfect topping. The ingredients are given below:

• Cream cheese
• Butter
• Powdered sugar
• Vanilla
• Buttermilk

Method:

To make the frosting, beat cream cheese, vanilla and butter together. To make the consistency thicker, add sugar and milk to this batter. When the frosting is made, décor your cupcakes to make them extra pretty and delicious.

Conclusion

Red velvet cupcakes are the most special cupcakes when it comes to the look as well as taste. These cupcakes have an attractive red color like no other cupcakes and have a unique chocolatey flavor and fluffy texture.

Red velvet cupcake recipes are mostly the same, with a slight difference of one or two ingredients. However, consistency is the main element to achieve the right color and flavor. The smoother the batter, the fluffier the cupcakes.