Red Velvet Cupcakes

It has been quite awhile since I've posted, so I've come with cupcakes, because who can be upset when I'm offering a vivid red velvet cupcake and milk?

No, it's not my birthday (but thanks for asking!).  Yes, it is three of my dear friends birthdays today, but, no, I didn't make these cupcakes for them (they live in the other three corners of the States - California, Florida, and Massachusetts).  I suppose I could mail them, but I don't think they'd be much good when they arrived.  And all the more, I'm stuck at home with a silly broken ankle.  (Yes, i'm fine and no, my cast is not red... had I been planning ahead I could have coordinated).  Well, now that i've told you (in a roundabout manner), why it is I have a dozen cupcakes and a bottle of milk (oh yes, and two bottles of Veuve Cliquot), I'll explain in full.  You see, I'm stuck at home, with not much to do (besides work, reading, knitting, researching for an upcoming trip to India, catching up on DVDs, and tearing apart some electronics).  I was supposed to meet some friends for happy hour tonight - to celebrate one girl getting married (actually, it turns out she didn't quite get married yet - something about Puerto Rico asking for a stamp on the back of her passport) and another's birthday.  Instead of hobbling out to the bar, my friends decided to come to me.  So I made these cupcakes to have as we open a bottle of champagne in celebration tonight.

Now that I've bored you with the details behind these cupcakes, I'd do best to share with you some photos.  I tried a new recipe (actually, come to think of it, I've never made red velvet cake before.. my amazing mother has always made it for me and I've simply eaten it).  I have eaten more than my fair share of it, so I do consider myself somewhat of a red velvet expert. 

You see, in my family, we have recently started a debate around what type of frosting belongs on red velvet.  What I grew up with was what I was always used to (and what my brother prefers).  However, at some point (I hear you asking "when?" and I regret to inform you that, if you can believe it, I don't remember when such a crucial turning point was!), I tasted red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting.  And I was a changed person.  Now nothing can compare with the delicious red velvet cake that my mom always made growing up.  But that cream cheese frosting, DANG!  So when I set off in search of the perfect recipe, I knew I had to find one with cream cheese frosting.  I settled on a recipe from the blog "Pinch My Salt".  I've copied the recipe at the bottom, but she has some lovely photos, so I'd recommend checking out her site as well.

What I liked about this particular recipe (aside from the fact that the I had all the ingredients!) was the way the food coloring was added.  It was mixed with the cocoa powder to form a paste (now I only had a 0.3 fl oz bottle of red food coloring, so I added water to get the appropriate consistency).  I found that this was significantly less messy than I had originally suspected and provided more than enough of the red color.

I also had an impromptu history lesson.  Apparently the red velvet cake was the signature cake at the Waldorf Astoria in the 1920s, and, as such, is referred to as the "Waldorf Astoria Cake."  In addition (according to Wikipedia, I warn you), when foods were rationed during WWII, people used beets to get the red color of the cake.  So it can be healthy too!  That, my friend, would be a welcome addition to any "Beet Party" you may go to.

With that, I will leave you, to hop on off (or, in your case, you may be able to just walk) to the kitchen and make some of these delicious darlings for yourself.  Just make sure you change out of any white you may be wearing!

Red Velvet Cake (a.k.a. Waldorf Astoria Cake) ---  (Recipe from Pinch My Salt)

2 1/2 cups sifted cake flour*
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons cocoa powder (unsweetened)
2 oz. red food coloring
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
1 teaspoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon baking soda

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour two 9-inch round cake pans or three 8-inch round cake pans.

2. Sift together the cake flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl; set aside.  In a small bowl, mix food coloring and cocoa powder to form a thin paste without lumps; set aside.

3. In a large bowl, using a hand mixer or stand mixer, beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, about three minutes.  Beat in eggs, one at a time, then beat in vanilla and the red cocoa paste, scraping down the bowl with a spatula as you go.  Add one third of the flour mixture to the butter mixture, beat well, then beat in half of the buttermilk. Beat in another third of flour mixture, then second half of buttermilk. End with the last third of the flour mixture, beat until well combined, making sure to scrape down the bowl with a spatula.

4. Make sure you have cake pans buttered, floured, and nearby.  In a small bowl, mix vinegar and baking soda.  Yes, it will fizz!  Add it to the cake batter and stir well to combine.  Working quickly, divide batter evenly between the cake pans and place them in a preheated 350 degree oven. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Check early, cake is done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

5. Cool the cakes in their pans on a wire rack for 10 minutes. To remove the cakes from the pan, place a wire rack on top of the cake pan and invert, then gently lift the pan.  Allow cakes to cool completely before frosting. Frost with buttercream or cream cheese icing (recipe below).

Recipe Notes: *Sift cake flour once before measuring, then sift again with the other dry ingredients per recipe instructions. Wear an apron and be careful with the red food coloring–no matter how hard I try, I always end up staining something!  As you’re mixing the cake batter, use a spatula to scrape down the bowl frequently throughout the entire process.

Cream Cheese Frosting

16 oz. cream cheese (2 packages), softened
1/2 cup unsalted butter (one stick), softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
pinch of salt

With an electric mixer, blend together cream cheese and butter until smooth.  Turn mixer to low speed and blend in powdered sugar, salt and vanilla extract.  Turn mixer on high and beat until light and fluffy. Use immediately or refrigerate, covered, until ready to use.  If refrigerated, the frosting will need to be brought to room temperature before using (after frosting softens up, beat with mixer until smooth).

Recipe Notes: If you prefer a sweeter and/or stiffer frosting, more powdered sugar can be added (up to four cups). But remember, the more sugar you add, the less you’ll be able to taste the tangy cream cheese!

Lemon + Meringue = Pie

Well, I have to be honest with you guys. When I read “Lemon Meringue Pie” for this months Daring Bakers challenge I didn’t know what to expect. Sure, I’d seen what I thought were lemon meringue pies before, but they were mystery of browned meringue… what was really under them? Where was the lemon? Well, thanks to Jen over at Canadian Baker, it’s no longer a mystery to me!

I started out making the pie dough. I won’t lie – I’m not pie expert – but I do have a few pies under my belt.. so I cut that butter, rolled that dough, and put that pie dough back in the fridge where it belonged. Since this post thus far has been in the spirit of full disclosure – I have to admit that I had decided I wanted to do mini-pies.. but I didn’t have any small pans. So we (my lovely assistant (aka my wonderful mom) and I) had the idea to use the muffin top pan we had. I had a quick crimping lesson from my mom, and then tried my hand at dolling-up the crusts :)

Unfortunately, we also didn’t have any pie weights (nor rice.. nor beans..) so we tried using couscous (if you look closely in the pictures below you can see the couscous-filled pies). Let me tell you – that was a bad idea. My mom spent quite awhile freeing the crusts of the itty-bitty particles. Anyhow, once the crusts were baked, we set them aside to cool.

The next part was to make the lemon curd. The hardest part about this was not eating it all before putting it in the pies! Let me tell you – that stuff is amazing. It’s such a wonderful combination of lemony-tart-goodness!

About the same time as the lemon curd was cooking, we were working on the candied lemon peels to decorate the tops of the lemon meringue pies. I thought the pie needed a little something extra, so we came up with the idea of putting some lemon curls on top. We did those by just boiling them several times in water.. and then letting them cook in heavily sugared water for awhile. We then needed a way to hopefully get them to keep their curls, so my mom suggested pinning them to a paper towel. The result was a rather amusing maze of lemon peels and straight pins. It looks to me like a little race course for the lemon zest! :)

Anyhow, while the lemon peels were turning themselves into statues, we worked on the meringue. Once the crusts were cool, we put the warm lemon curd in, and let them sit under they were cooled to room temperature. Then came the fun part of piling the meringue on top! It was fun to make crazy designs and spikes in the meringue. The pies happened to go into the oven again while we were sitting down to dinner – but I got up every couple of minutes to ensure the meringue tops didn’t burn..

This was a fun challenge – it was a great chance to make pies (which, like I said, I don’t make very often), taught me that couscous is not a good substitute for pie weights (!), and I learned that there is not much mystery to lemon meringue pies – it really is just lemon, meringue, and pie!

Lemon Meringue Mini-Pies, garnished with Strawberries and Candied Lemon Peels:

White Chocolate Raspberry Yule Log

So not only was this my first Daring Baker challenge but it was also my first time making a yule log. Since I was home for Christmas, I had the pleasure of having a wonderful assistant – my mom! I decided I wanted to try something different, so I decided to make a white chocolate genoise cake. I followed the recipe with the only exception being that I added 3 oz of melted white chocolate chips. I melted the chocolate over a simmering pot of hot water and then added the melted chocolate right before I folded the flour in.

It looked like it deflated the eggs a little bit, but nothing too bad. I almost forgot to butter the pan underneath and on top of the parchment paper (which could have led to disaster), but luckily my mom reminded me. I was also worried that there wasn’t enough batter – it made a very thin layer in the jelly roll pan, but I think it turned out all right.

I found a very good King Arthur article on yule logs – so I followed their suggestion on how to roll the log. I had decided to do a raspberry buttercream filling (my family has an aversion to coffee-flavoring – don’t get me wrong, I love coffee… just not so keen on coffee-flavored things). So I knew that I didn’t want to put the filling in while the cake was still warm, so (at King Arthur’s suggestion), I laid out a tea towel and doused it with powdered sugar.

We then flipped the cake out onto the tea towel and, again, covered the top of the cake with massive amounts of powdered sugar (so that nothing would stick). At this point, I thought the cake was a bit underdone (I was really worried about overbaking it, so I took it out after about 9 min in a 325 convection oven). I then rolled the cake up, with the tea towel still on it. I set it to cool for the next couple of hours.

My attention then turned to the filling: raspberry buttercream. To make the buttercream raspberry-flavored, we decided to puree and then strain some raspberries with a tiny bit of sugar. This was my first attempt at buttercream – and, it appeared to curdle. I looked up a bunch of different things on the web, trying to figure out what had happened (and turned to the old trustee “Best Recipes” from America’s Test Kitchen). Everything said to keep beating it. So I tried that, but it didn’t seem to work. We ended up adding some powdered sugar until the consistency was right, threw it in the fridge, and hoped for the best. A little while later, it looked better and tasted good, so we used it. Unrolling the log was nerve-wrecking, but it didn’t split at all! I was very happy about that.

In the meantime, we made marzipan and worked on the buttercream frosting for the outside. I decide to make this chocolate buttercream (rather than coffee) and this time my mom suggested beating the eggs a lot longer (and heating them to a bit higher temperature). So we ended up with what looked like meringue (many websites said that buttercream is just meringue + hot sugar syrup).

I tried to color it with just the cocoa powder, but it wasn’t a rich enough brown, so I added some brown food coloring (in paste form). That seemed to do the trick. We had to chill the log a couple of times (the raspberry buttercream filling was pretty soft – probably due to the puree we added for the raspberry flavor/color). And in the end, I think I chilled the chocolate buttercream frosting a bit too long, as I had to wait a bit for it to warm up so it was easier to frost.

We made marzipan for the mushrooms/decorations. I forgot we had paste food coloring (which probably would have given us more vivid colors) so we just colored the marzipan with regular food coloring. We made mushrooms (dusted with cocoa powder for the dirt), elves, and presents. Unfortunately, we ran out of time before we could make meringue mushrooms (I wanted to try those) – but maybe next time! We dusted it with powdered sugar to make it look like there was freshly fallen snow…

So now.. for the final pictures:

Overview: Whimsical on one side.. Mushrooms on the other


Meeting the mushroom requirement… check!


The mushrooms looked surprisingly real!


Naughty or Nice…?


Christmas Elf #1


The Whimsical Side