Red, Red Velvet

Yesterday night after getting off work at the bar, instead of making crazy Friday night plans or gossiping with my girlfriends, I had the following text exchange with my beautiful baking buddy Dee:
          D: Why doesn't my red velvet ever turn out as red as it should be? :(
          M: Story of my life. (you laugh, but it actually is)
This continued for way longer than a conversation about food colouring should continue, and ended with:
          M: I'll try them again and see what I can come up with...the little bastards are always reddish brown.

Because I'm a compulsive perfectionist about some things, cupcakes included, I set out to make the reddest red velvets I've ever made. According to Wikipedia, "Red velvet is a cake with a dark red, bright red or red-brown color." If that's the case, then why is every red velvet I've ever seen made on TV this unnatural shade of scarlet that I just can't seem to replicate? This is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night (I don't like to focus on real problems)...so here's what happened:

I decided to stick with the ingredients and amounts of my regular red velvet recipe, which is a mish-mash of recipes I've found online and in books. Most red velvet recipes are essentially the same, so I figure this can't be the key to the colour. I kept the cocoa to a minimum, and added what I think is scientifically termed a 'shit-ton' of red food colouring to my buttermilk. By the time the batter was finished, it was definitely bright....bright bloody FUSCHIA. After swearing and stirring it for a while hoping it would magically turn red, I made a thin cocoa-water paste and added more red colour and a little bit of yellow. I threw them in the oven and tried not to look, convinced that my velvets were going to look like a drag-queen's wet dream and not the scarlet beauties I was aiming for. BUT THEN, a 'one month til Christmas' miracle happened... and the cupcakes I ended up with were a gorgeous deep red and totally delicious. I suspect that my oven is actually a portal to Narnia, and that my cupcakes were swapped out by a charming little goat-man who took pity on me swearing at random kitchen appliances. I'm going to take credit anyway though, so here you go. Really Red (yay!) Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting.