Paula Deen's Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

A co-worker brought in leftover cupcakes from her daughter's first birthday and I couldn't stop thinking about Red Velvet and Cream cheese frosting. I went internet searching and hit pay dirt when I found Paula Deen's recipe on the Food Network website, link here. I read through the comments and took note not to use as much vegetable oil and made a few other adjustments as I went along. The following is the recipe for the cupcakes that I used.

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 teaspoons cocoa powder
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup buttermilk, room temperature
• 2 large eggs, room temperature
• 2 tablespoons food coloring, one red and one pink (since I didn't have as much red as I thought)
• 1 teaspoon white distilled vinegar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

You'll notice that I tripled the cocoa powder that Paula calls for because I felt like I could taste the vinegar and wanted to make sure that no one else could. The reviews were all very positive and I like how they turned out. I followed the directions given on her site exactly with my modified portions.
The comments on her site advised to cut the frosting recipe in half, as did a fellow blogger LLL. So I did, and thank God because I still had extra frosting after being very generous with the cupcakes.
This recipe took about an hour and a half from start to finish because I only put one batch of cupcakes into the oven at a time and I cam out with an even 24 cupcakes (there's a first time for everything right?)
The result- even Mr. T enjoyed them (probably more than he enjoyed me photographing his consumption):

We also had a visitor over the weekend of May 8 and 9. Bretta's brother and litter mate, Slim, came to stay with us while his Mom and Dad went wine tasting for their anniversary. We had a lot of fun and considered telling his parents that he ran away so that we could keep him... But then we thought about how sad that would make us and didn't do it. It was so fun to see that they do everything identically. From the way they drink and sniff to the way they beg for attention.