Red Velvet Cupcakes: Not feeling the craze?

So in light of starting my dissy year at Uni I have succesfully procrastinated for another evening by baking some new flavour cupcakes - Red Velvet. All the cupcake blogs I follow have been raving about these, and even Brooke from One Tree Hill wanted them as part of her wedding cake (ahh I love it :P). Simply put, they are the usual recipe for vanilla cupcakes, but with cocoa powder and red food colouring. I'm not feeling it. I was expecting some mind blowing taste explosion to happen but my parents and I were left feeling disappointed after a taste-testing sesh. Maybe it was the recipe I used. Maybe it was my oven. I don't mean to toot my own horn but I'm one of the best cooks in my family, so I don't like to blame myself :P

Cocoa Powder and Red Food Colouring "Paste," this was added to the cake batter.

Anyway, I won't tell you the recipe. I think it was a ridiculous take on the basic vanilla sponge method. It even told me to add a mixture of bicarb of soda and white vinegar (and we all know what happens with that, we all used them in some sort of volcano project at school). Anyways, they do look good, I'll give myself that. But I won't be trying them again until I taste an amazingly good Red Velvet cupcake, possibly from a shop. I'm sure it won't take long for the UK to cotton on to this American craze.

The pretty pattern the cocoa paste made once swirled with the cake batter.

Oh and one of my best friend's, Nikki, bought me a little present the other day - my new apron! How cute is that?!

Anyone else tasted some great/not so great Red Velvet Cupcakes? Let me know!
Happy Baking x