Easter Baking Fail

I spent a good chunk of Saturday baking cupcakes for yesterday's Easter dinners (we do double duty on holidays by hitting up both of our parents' dinners).  Too bad no one got to eat the spoils of my labor!  They look delicious, don't they?  I'm sorry to tell you that they were pretty tasteless and a bit dry.

I decided to make red velvet cupcakes but forgot to write red food dye on the store list, so they turned out to be tan velvet cupcakes.  I used a recipe that I found from an episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay, so I expected them to be super delicious.

Unfortunately they were not.  Even the cream cheese frosting that I made didn't help them.  I'm not sure how this recipe failed because I followed it correctly except for the red food dye.  Could the food dye have made the difference in moistness?

They taste more like muffins than cupcakes, so I ended up throwing them in the freezer for future Sunday brunches.  They'll be fine toasted with some butter and jam.  Did you make any Easter goodies this weekend?