SUCCESS!

After much trial and tribulation, I've finally discovered the secret to an all natural red velvet! With so many people having allergies to the dyes in food colouring nowadays, I wanted to create the classic favorite that everyone could enjoy!
I'd tried using muddled raspberries and pomegranate juice and it barely gave the cake any colour, if any at all. After reading about beets being used in the batter, I was still skeptical since every picture I saw of the end result was more of a reddish-brown than a nice, bright red. Plus the colour in beets can easily be altered with any pH change in the batter, so that too made me a little leary.
There were dozens of different methods for using beets; grate them and mix them in, use beet juice, boil the beets and use the water...but I wasn't happy with the results of any of them. Finally I tried boiling about 4 medium sized beets for almost an hour. After that I reduced the water until there was approximately 4oz left; what was left over was a concentrated natural dye that was as dark, if not darker, than any red food colouring I've ever seen. After letting it cool, I mixed it into the batter and success! I was left with the gorgeous red colour I had been after.
The only thing I was surprised at was after baking, the inside of the cupcakes reverted back to the light brown colour of the batter before I added the colouring. The outside, however, stayed that nice red. I still have a little tweaking to do, but overall I'm very pleased with how they turned out!