Red Velvet Cupcakes for The Red Pump Project 500 in 50

Today, Thursday March 10, is National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day in the United States.  To quote The Red Pump Project website:

It’s a nationwide initiative to raise awareness about the increasing impact of HIV/AIDS on women & girls and encourages ladies to take action. While progress has definitely been made in the areas of AIDS prevention and treatment, women still represent 27% of all new AIDS diagnoses, with African-American women accounting for 66% of that group. This year focuses on this statistic, “Every 35 minutes, a woman tests positive for HIV in the United States.”

To observe this day, The Red Pump Project requested bloggers to help meet its goal of getting 500 blogs in 50 days displaying the "Rock The Red Pump" logo.  The red shoe represents the courage of women directly or indirectly fighting HIV/AIDS.  Although this is a US campaign, I think it highlights issues that are equally relevant and important in Australia, hence my participation.

To  mark this day, I made red velvet cupcakes using Martha Stewart's recipe, which can be found online here:

Instead of cream cheese frosting, I just used water icing sprinkled with red hearts (fitting in with the red theme).

I found these cupcakes had a rather strange, tinny taste. [Update:  These tasted much better the next morning - perhaps the flavours need time to meld?]  Despite my using the suggested amount of gel food colouring, they are also not particularly red: 

However, they are very moist (because of the use of oil instead of butter), and my "meh" feelings about them may be because I am not a red velvet fan.

Remember to Rock the Red Pump on March 10 in support of women and girls everywhere who are directly or indirectly fighting the fight against HIV/AIDS.