Red Velvet Cake

One of my first posts on BMTB was about Red Velvet Cake.  Since making it for the first time just over two years ago it has become a favourite amongst my friends and family.  It was Shane’s birthday yesterday and his birthday cake request was for – you guessed it – Red Velvet Cake!  I haven’t changed much from Bakerella’s recipe but will share with you my way of doing things as my first post was just pictures on my attempt and a link to the Bakerella site.

Ingredients:
2½ cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1½ tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
1½ cups oil
1 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
50ml liquid red food colouring (less if using gel colouring)

Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease two 20cm cake pans.
Lightly whisk eggs in a medium-large bowl. Add remaining liquid ingredients and mix together with whisk or whisk attachment on an electric mixer until blended. Set aside.
(Yes, it is shockingly red! BUT you do need to add all 50mls of food colouring otherwise you will end up with a rusty/brownish coloured cake. If using gel colouring add a teaspoon to start and go from there.)
Place all the dry ingredients in another mixing bowl and stir together to combine with another wire whisk.
Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients.
Mix on medium-high with an electric mixer for about a minute or until completely combined.
Pour into cake pans and then drop the pans on the counter a few times to release any air bubbles.
Bake for about 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
After 15-30 minutes, remove from pans and cool completely on a wire rack.
Then make the frosting.

To make the delicious cream cheese frosting frosting you will need:
250 grams cream cheese, room temperature
200 grams butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
5 cups icing sugar

Sift icing sugar and set aside.
Beat cream cheese and butter on high until creamy.  Add vanilla.
Then, add the sugar in batches.  I add two cups the first time and mix before scraping down the sides of the bowl and adding one cup at a time after that.
Place one of your cakes on a cake stand or serving plate and evenly cover the top with frosting.  Place your other cake on top and frost the rest.

A few more tips:
To ensure that your cake sits flat level each of your cakes, this is best done with a serrated knife.
To keep crumbs out of your frosting do a ‘crumb coat’ this is a thinner layer of frosting that acts like a glue keeping crumbs in one place.  The crumb coat needs to be dry to the touch before you put the final layer of icing on.  I was a little over eager to get my cake finished and my crumb coat wasn’t completely dry when I put my final layer of frosting on.  If you don’t have time or are just too eager to dig in and eat your cake you can flag the crumb coating.

If you haven’t tried red velvet cake yet, you must!  If you have, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Chocolate Cake Pops

In January I had both Matthew’s (Andie’s son) and Max’s first birthday parties to attend so I decided to give making cake  pops a try.  This is a very simple ‘how-to’ for making them, I am in no way an expert and will gladly leave that title to Bakerella! 

Basically to make cake pops you need to make a cake.  Then you smash the cake and mix it with an icing-like substance.  Then you roll it into balls, chill them, then pop in some sticks and dip in chocolate :P 

You can use the chocolate cake recipe that I have given below or any other of your choosing – a packet mix is fine.  I got my pop sticks from Milly’s – they sell long Wilton brand sticks and they also stock their own brand of shorter sticks, which is what I used as they were half the price.

Chocolate Cake:
110g self raising flour
40g cocoa powder
200g caster sugar
80g unsalted butter, at room temperature
125g dark chocolate, finely chopped
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Icing Mix:
80g unsalted butter
125g icing sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 tablespoons cream

Other:
375g Chocolate, melted, to cover the cake balls
30 (approx) lollipop sticks

To make the cake, preheat the oven to 180°C.  Grease and line a 22 cm round cake tin with baking paper.  Sift the flour and cocoa together in a large bowl.  Combine the sugar and 125ml boiling water in the top of a double boiler over a medium heat and stir until dissolved.  Add the butter and chocolate and stir until smooth.  Cool slightly.
Combine the egg and vanilla extract then add to the flour mixture and mix well.  Add the chocolate mixture and mix to combine.  Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 30 – 35 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.  Remove from the tin and cool completely on a wire rack.

Finely crumb the chocolate cake into a large bowl.  Place the butter, icing sugar and cocoa in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat for 1-2 minutes or until light and creamy.  Add the cream and mix well.  Add to the cake crumbs and mix well (the mixture should stick together when squeezed).
Line two baking trays with baking paper.  Roll the mixture into small balls, about the same size as a truffle.  Place on the trays and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
Carefully insert a stick into each cake ball and dip into the melted chocolate, swirling off the excess.

For Matthew’s party I coated the cake pop with white chocolate and then drizzled dark chocolate over the top as Andie had decided on a ‘Cookies and Cream’ theme.  For Max’s party I used red and light blue candy melts by Wilton (a little tip – mixing vegetable oil with the candy melts makes the consistency a lot better to work with, add a little a time while melting them until you have a consistency you are happy with) and topped them with sprinkles.

Inspiration: Halloween Treats

Halloween is coming up in 10 days – a good excuse to bake up some sweet treats. Halloween has only started to be recognised in New Zealand over more recent years (there is something a little weird about about sending your kids out to ask strangers for candy), will you be celebrating it this year?

I just loved some of the images google spat out for me when I was looking for inspiration so had to share some of my favorites, the Nightmare Before Christmas cake is amazing, the flooded cookies make me think about trying to master that skill again and I recognised the cake pops straight away as Bakerella’s work, you can find out more about them here. I have actually made some little spider cupcakes before you can check them out here and last years Halloween baking can be found here.

I am really liking the little meringue ghosts and am tempted to give that a go but we will see. Be sure to check back after Halloween to see what I whipped up and if you want to share your creations why don’t you get in touch through our facebook page.

Cookie Dough Brownies

A few weeks ago I saw a cookie dough inspired post on ‘Love From The Oven’, a blog I follow – it reminded me of these amazing but incredibly easy brownies my idol ‘Bakerella’ made a couple of years ago,  I hadn’t attempted them as yet as we didn’t have some of her “cheat” ingredients here in New Zealand.  Sure enough Bakerella’s brownies were featured further down the post so I went back and looked at the original and decided that I could definitely make them (by swapping out the ‘Hershey’s Brownie Mix’ with another Betty Crocker mix – I used ‘Triple Chocolate Fudge’) and so can you!  They are super easy but sure to impress, all you need is:

 
Follow the instructions on the boxes, making the brownies first, pouring the mix into your tin or dish then placing blobs of the made up cookie mixture on top.  If the cookie dough doesn’t sink into the mix just give it a gentle push down.

 Pre cooking

Then place in the oven and bake according to the boxes instructions for temperature and about 30-35 minutes.

Baked Brownie (sorry about the photo quality – it was night time).

Now at this point you could allow your brownie to cool, cut it into slices and eat by itself or dusted with icing sugar.  Me, I took a lead out of Bakerella’s book and covered mine with a chocolate ganache – the hardest part about doing this is waiting for the ganache to set!

Chocolate Ganache:
1 Cup Cream
50 grams Butter
120 grams Dark Cooking Chocolate (cut up roughly)

In a small saucepan, heat cream and butter until just before the boiling stage.  Pour over the chocolate.
Let stand about 30 seconds and stir until smooth.
Pour over brownies and let set before cutting (to help mine along I put the dish in the fridge to set).

Next time I make these I think I will try using ‘Natalie’s Brownie’ recipe, which I’m sure will only make them better!  Give them a go and if you get around to making them using Natalie’s brownie recipe before me, let me know how they turned out by leaving a comment.

Thank you Bakerella and thank you Betty Crocker!
(You will all be thanking me too – once you give them a go)

Red Velvet Cupcakes – YUM!

These are so delicious I just had to share! Red Velvet cake has become my all time favorite since making it for the first time last year. I am still using Bakerella’s recipe (which makes 30 cupcakes), both Shane and I prefer it to cupcakes we have bought. If you still haven’t tried it I really do encourage you to give it a go, cakes or cupcakes it is the perfect combination of taste, texture and striking colour.

Candy Melts

On Sunday while Courtenay and I were out shopping we popped into Milly’s on Ponsonby Road.  We both got ourselves some Wilton Candy Melts to try out - we had seen them on Bakerella’s website previously, but had never seen them in store anywhere before.

I got myself a hearts candy mould to try out my Candy Melts with – very easy peasy to use, just fill up the moulds with chocolate (like you are making ice cubes – omg, idea alert – you know how you can get funny shaped ice cube trays, like space invaders?  Well I’m thinking the silicone trays could just as easily be used to make chocolate shapes) and empty them out when set.  You could add stuff like nuts or coloured sprinkles to the moulds too.

Okay – so my (Courtenay’s) attempt at using my Candy Melts didn’t come out anywhere near as cute as Melissa’s, I piped in the pink as suggested on the moulds packaging, but, I think it would have been better and I would have had a far nicer finish if I had spooned it in like I have in the past. I was going to give it a second attempt but have come up with what I think will be a far better use for my melts so check back soon :-)

Moist Yellow Cake

My Red Velvet Cake wasn’t the first time I made something from ‘Bakerella’. Last year I saw this cake on her website and had to give it a go! It’s not quite as lovely looking as hers, but man did it taste good. If you want to give it a go, the recipe can be found here.  In fact if you do give this a go,or try anything else that is interesting, post a comment and maybe share a picture with us :-)

My weekend in the kitchen

Well, last week when I posted about the Vanilla Beans I said I'd try the recipe for Vanilla Panna Cotta on the packet. I gave it a go and it was a lot easier than I thought it would be and they turned out better than I had expected, so I thought I'd share the recipe with you:

3 teaspoons gelatine
100ml hot water
600ml thickened cream
4 tablespoons caster sugar
2 vanilla beans (split and scraped)
1 punnet raspberries
1 lime (finely grated)

1. Dissolve the gelatine in hot water. Stir briskly with a fork.

2. Boil together the cream, sugar and scrapped vanilla bean seeds. Allow to simmer for 1 minute. Pour in dissolved gelatine.

 
3. Pour into four 125ml moulds and allow to set in the refrigerator. Serve with fresh raspberries and grated lime rind. (Serves 4)

When I removed mine from the moulds this afternoon I noticed that there was a little separation of the gelatine on the top and that most of the vanilla seeds had settled there as well so I will have to have another go to perfect this one :)

 

   
I also attempted the Red Velvet cake Bakerella posted the other day. I have wanted to try this cake for SO long and it is as good as I wanted it to be! I was a tad shocked as I was mixing it up because the mixture was very, very, very red!


Here is the finished product – be warned there is A LOT of icing……

  
YUM!!!!

 
Until next time :-)

Beautiful Baking Blogs

BAKERELLA
Ok, so Courtenay and I LOVE Bakerella. If you haven’t checked out her blog DO SO IMMEDIATELY. http://www.bakerella.com/

SWEETOPIA
Right. Then, once you have finished falling in love with Bakerella, visit sweetopia – very adorable iced cookies to be seen here. I’m jealous because I don’t think I have the artistic talent to pull something like them off. http://www.sweetopia.net/

CREAM PUFFS IN VENICE
Lastly, take a look at Cream Puffs in Venice. Every picture on this blog makes my mouth water. I’m thinking this blogger would host the most fabulous dinner parties. http://creampuffsinvenice.ca/

Then of course you have our blog, which will keep getting bigger and better :-)
(I included a nose on the face just for you Courtie!)