Red State Blue State cupcakes

Yesterday afternoon I baked miniature cupcakes for the big house party DJ and I hosted last night. The house party theme was "Red State Blue State" (we're both obsessed with the US Election - I'm currently addicted to fivethirtyeight, it's like electoral polling crack!) so I wanted to make some red and blue bipartisan cupcakes to serve to our guests. I decided to make red velvet cupcakes with blue cream cheese frosting.



I pinched the recipe for red velvet cupcakes from Sydney food blogger Not Quite Nigella - see it for yourself here. These cupcakes don't have a raising agent in them, so they were rather pleasantly dense, but not stodgy.



They worked out great, except that I only ended up having 7ml of red food colouring, and the recipe called for 60ml!! So instead of being red like Alaska or Texas or Louisiana, the cupcakes were pale pink like West Virginia or Georgia... :)
Next time I'll add tons of food colouring so that they're fire truck red!


The cream cheese frosting came out a marvellously lurid shade of blue...


...and Schatzi brought delicious starry cookies she'd made that afternoon! She also brought over the video of the Vice-Presidential debate which we screened mute on a continuous loop throughout the night, overlooking the dancefloor.


Essential party accessories were the "Governor Palin How To Field Dress a Moose Commemorative U.S. Election Tea Towel" and assorted badges by firstdogonthemoon, courtesy of my Crikey subscription. In addition to the usual house party booze, we drank jug after jug of Pimms and lemonade/ginger ale, mixed with cucumber and lots of weird and wonderful fruit, and partied like the mavericks that we are. I served the 50+ mini cupcakes at about 11:45pm, and they were all gobbled up in no time!