Red Velvet Cupcakes = True Love

Of all of the baked goods that I've made lately, the one that seems to have given rise to the most enthusiastic and devoted following is the red velvet cake. I'm starting to think that the intense red color of the cake has some sort of hypnotic effect, because people are always delighted just to lay eyes on the cake, and then absolutely smitten when they finally taste it. (Maybe this is a holdover from the widespread childhood fascination with artificially-colored foods.)

So I was not all that surprised when I offered to supply some baked goods to a friend's celebratory happy hour following her courthouse wedding, and her request was for red velvet cake. At first, we discussed a large cake that could serve 50 or 60 people. While I don't make multi-tier cakes, I told her that I could make a large (say 14-inch round) two-layer cake that would serve all of her guests. But after further discussion, and wanting to avoid the mess and extra work that would be required to cut and serve slices from a large cake, we decided to go with cupcakes instead.

I made four batches of Cake Man Raven's red velvet cake recipe into 78 cupcakes, and frosted them with 8 batches of pumpkin-raisin bar frosting. To make the cupcakes a little more festive, I used red foil baking cups and topped them with white, pink and red heart-shaped sprinkles. To transport the cupcakes to the happy hour, I used my two cupcake couriers. The cupcake courier is an ingenious invention that carries 36 cupcakes neatly and securely without any danger of smooshed frosting. I know that most people don't need to carry three dozen cupcakes at a time, but for those of us who do, this thing is a godsend. (My only complaint is that it is quite heavy, especially when loaded down with cupcakes... I would love to see a cupcake courier on wheels with a retractable handle, like a rolling brief bag.)

Best wishes to the happy couple for a lifetime of sweetness and love!

Recipes:

• Red Velvet Cake from Cake Man Raven, recipe available online here.
• Frosting recipe from Pumpkin-Raisin Bars from epicurious.com.

Previous Post:

• "Holiday Party Recap, Part III: Ready For A Throwdown!," December 17, 2008.
  

Ooey-Gooey? Phooey!

A couple of weeks ago, the LA Times Culinary SOS Column featured the recipe for Milk's "Ooey-Gooey Double-Chocolate Cookies." With a name like that, I knew I would have to give these cookies a try, and so I took the recipe for a spin earlier this week for an office happy hour. According to the Times, these cookies are baked just long enough to set up on the outside, while remaining "ooey-gooey" on the inside, creating a perfectly messy treat.

The recipe is easy. You melt together butter and unsweetened chocolate in a double boiler, add the result to a mixture of eggs, vanilla and sugar, stir in flour sifted with cocoa powder, baking powder and salt, and then add bittersweet chocolate chips. You chill the dough for an hour before baking. After chilling, the recipe instructs you to divide the dough into 18 portions and shape it into balls with greased hands. I think directions like this are just silly--who can divide a batch of dough into 18 equal portions, and who wants to deal with the mess? So I used a #24 cookie scoop instead, and I got 22 cookies out of the batch, each perfectly round and cleanly formed without any muss or fuss. I discovered that this cookie spreads very little in the oven, so after the first pan of cookies came out very puffy and rounded, I flattened the dough in subsequent batches before baking to get flatter cookies.

When I took the cookies out of the oven, they were very very soft, just as the recipe said they would be. In fact, Tom tried a cookie after it had cooled a little and he had to use a fork to eat it. I was a little afraid they might not solidify enough to actually stack them into a container and take them to work. Instead, I discovered that by the next morning, they had completely firmed up and were actually a little on the hard side. I found the flavor of these cookies to be disappointing. I used very good chocolate (Guittard unsweetened, Guittard chocolate chips, and Penzey's hi-fat dutch cocoa), but the cookie's flavor was very flat and one-dimensional, a little like biting into an American milk chocolate bar. However, these cookies received absolutely rave reviews from everyone who tried them... Maybe I will make them again some day and see if I can get the ooey-gooey part right next time!

Recipe: "Milk's Ooey-Gooey Double-Chocolate Cookies," Los Angeles Times Culinary SOS Column, January 14, 2009.

Can Anyone Help Out an Asian Girl From Nebraska?

Next week at work, we’re having a party for our departing Bureau Director. I offered a baked goods donation, at which point I was informed that the party theme was “Jewish New York.” Hmmm, this puts me firmly outside of my baked goods experience and comfort zone. As an Asian girl who was born and raised in Nebraska, I only knew two Jewish families the entire 17 years I lived there. I remember the first time when I saw a bagel – a high school classmate brought one to speech practice – because I didn’t know what it was (when my parents moved to Los Angeles in 1990, I still remember our euphoria at discovering the Western Bagel store nearby... the idea of an entire store that sold nothing but bagels was so exciting and novel!). I figured that I had better make a dry run of a couple of baked goods options before agreeing to supply anything to the party.

First, I decided to try making rugelach. I debated between a recipe on epicurious.com and one from the Los Angeles Times before going with the epicurious one since it was supported by a lot of positive reader reviews. The dough contains only butter, cream cheese, flour, and salt, and it is refrigerated overnight before it is rolled out and then topped with jam (I tried both apricot and raspberry), walnuts, golden raisins, and cinnamon sugar.

Having no frame of reference for what rugelach is supposed to actually taste like (I have only tasted the kind that comes in the clear plastic tub at Costco), I took cookies over to several Jewish friends for an opinion. While there was universal agreement that the filling was tasty, I received multiple comments that there was too much filling (or not enough pastry) and that the pastry was not firm enough. Another friend was adamant that rugelach should not have jam in the filling at all and that they must be made in the traditional shape of crescents or horns. I decided that my rugelach definitely need improvement, and while I will go back to try making them again someday (one friend gave me a couple of recipes from her Jewish cookbooks to try), I don’t want to try to perfect them in time for the party next week.

I also decided to try making Black and White Cookies, a New York tradition. I have tried making these once before (using a recipe from Nancy Baggett's All-American Cookie Book), with unsatisfactory results (the cookies were crumbly and the icing was not opaque). I decided to go with another epicurious.com recipe that had received very good reviews. The recipe as written makes eight gigantic cookies. I tripled the recipe and ended up with 40 smaller cookies made with a #30 scoop (they baked more quickly, in 14 minutes). The cookies baked up cakey-soft and lightly golden, moderately domed and perfectly round.

The icing was interesting. The base vanilla-lemon frosting worked out great and it set hard and glossy. The chocolate frosting was another story. I had to add quite a bit of water to thin it out to spreading consistency, and while it looked like it was hard set the next morning, I discovered upon arriving at work that the chocolate half of the frosting was sticking to the sheets of waxed paper between the layers of cookies in my tupperware container. It was ugly. However, I thought the cookies tasted good – the lemon juice in the frosting created the illusion of a lemon-flavored cookie with vanilla and chocolate frosting.

However, also having no frame of reference for what an authentic Black and White cookie should taste like, I sent a box of cookies over to an attorney who is a self-proclaimed Jewish boy from New York and “the right man for the job” to evaluate the Black and Whites. Thankfully, he proclaimed them delicious and party-worthy. I will work on fixing the sticky chocolate frosting problem in the next few days and I’m looking forward to the party next week!

Recipes:

• Rugelach from epicurious.com.
• Black and White Cookies from epicurious.com.
  

Love Is In The Air (At Least For Brunch)

Over the weekend Tom and I attended a brunch held in honor of a friend who recently got married. I told the brunch hostesses that I would be happy to bring some baked goods, and since they already had dessert covered (cupcakes and a sheet cake), I agreed to bring scones and a coffee cake (what can I say, I have a pretty limited breakfast baked goods repertoire).

Not much new to look at here... The scones were the recipe I normally use from Clementine, and the coffee cake was my favorite recipe from the Land O' Lakes booklet I picked up at the grocery store checkout stand a decade ago (it's a very moist and bright white cake with milk and cream cheese in the batter, with a topping of butter, flour, brown sugar and cinnamon). I made the coffee cake with fresh blueberries, and I planned to make strawberry scones. However, Trader Joe's appears to have stopped carrying dried strawberries, so I used a bag of dried mixed berries (cherries, blueberries, strawberries) for the scones instead.

Tom spotted a child at the brunch eating the crumble topping off of a piece of coffee cake. I wonder if he's the same person who licked the chocolate frosting from the top of a cupcake and left the stump on the serving tray?

Congratulations Karen and Alberto!

Recipes:

• Clementine Strawberry Scones, Los Angeles Times, April 27, 2005.
• "Kathryn's Blueberry Coffee Cake," Land O Lakes Recipe Collection: 75th Anniversary All-Time Favorites (1996).
  

Previous Posts:

• "A Crumbly Treat," July 31, 2008.
  
• "What Goes With a Cookies 'n' Cream Ice Cream Cake?," June 11, 2008.

Inaugural Bakextravaganza Part III: Cute Little Cakes

The final piece of the Inaugural Bakextravanganza was mini-cupcakes. Originally I had planned to supply only red velvet mini-cupcakes (as usual, I frosted the red velvet cupcakes with the cream cheese frosting from the pumpkin-raisin bar recipe on epicurious.com; a triple batch of the frosting provided ample coverage for the cupcakes made with a single batch of cake batter). But after my biscotti failure, I was short a few baked goods and I decided to kill two birds with one stone by making some Restaurant Eve mini-cupcakes as well. My friend Dorothy had specifically requested a Restaurant Eve cake for her birthday, which happened to be the day before the inauguration. So I made her a small 4-inch diameter two-layer cake, and then I used the rest of the cake batter to make mini-cupcakes.

I frosted the Restaurant Eve mini-cake and mini-cupcakes with pink frosting, using a pastry bag with a star tip. There was quite a bit of leftover frosting, and so I went a little crazy decorating Dorothy's cake with excess stars and embellishments (fortunately, I knew that Dorothy could care less how tacky the end result turned out to be... the finished cake looked like something that a five-year old girl who likes Disney princesses might get really excited about).

When I frosted the mini-cupcakes, I left a small exposed perimeter of cake along the edges. I personally like the way this looks, especially with something like a red velvet cake where you can see the vibrant color of the underlying cake. However, it was also a necessity in this situation, since I had to pack these cupcakes in bakery boxes for transport. I used 10-inch square bakery boxes, which perfectly hold 25 cupcakes in rows of 5. If you tightly pack cupcakes that are frosted edge-to-edge like this, all you'll get is the heartache of smushed frosting.

In the end, I delivered 100 mini-cupcakes along with the cookies and bars from my previous two posts... It was a whirlwind weekend of baking, but I was happy to have the opportunity to make a contribution on this historic occasion!

Recipes:

• Restaurant Eve's Cake from the Washington Post, April 23, 2006.
  
• Red Velvet Cake from Cake Man Raven, recipe available online here.
• Frosting recipe from Pumpkin-Raisin Bars, from epicurious.com.
  

Previous Posts:

• "My Cup(cakes) Runneth Over: Mini Red Velvet Cupcakes," January 14, 2009.
• "Holiday Party Recap, Part III: Ready For a Throwdown!," December 17, 2008.
• "Alexander's Birthday Party," September 21, 2008.
  

Inaugural Bakextravaganza Part II: Bars

My old apartment had a miniature oven into which I could barely fit a single 9 by 13-inch pan. I'm happy to report that even though my current oven is still pretty small, it will at least fit two 9 by 13-inch pans side by side on a single rack, which makes baking massive quantities of bars a lot easier. (I never like to use two separate racks to bake, since that usually results in uneven browning and unpredictable baking times, even if I rotate the pans and switch racks halfway through. Even baking two pans side by side can have its own challenges... My 9 by 13-inch pans are from different manufacturers and are non-identical. To ensure that I have the same amount of batter in the two pans so that they will finish baking at the same time, I usually pour in the batter and weigh the filled pans, taking into account the fact that one of the pans weighs 240 grams more than the other... I really should suck it up and just buy an identical set of pans!)

The inaugural party baked goods tally was 18 dozen bars, including Raspberry-Filled White Chocolate Bars, Chewy Cherry Almond Bars, Caramel Pecan Bars, Ultimate Lemon Butter Bars, and Midnight Brownie Bites.

Recipes:

• "Raspberry-Filled White Chocolate Bars," from the 1990 Pillsbury Bakeoff by contestant Mark Bocianski.
• "Chewy Cherry Almond Bars," from Cookies and Brownies by Alice Medrich.
• Caramel Pecan Cookies from epicurious.com.
• The Ultimate Lemon Butter Bar, from Rose's Christmas Cookies by Rose Levy Beranbaum, reprinted on epicurious.com.
• "Midnight Chocolate Brownie Bites," from the Los Angeles Times, July 2, 2008.
  

Previous Posts:

• "Holiday Party Recap, Part II: Bites, Bars, and a Holiday Standard," December 15, 1008.
  
• "Hey, Boo Boo! What's In the Pic-a-Nic Basket?," June 26, 2008.
• "It's Starting to Taste a Little Like Autumn," September 17, 2008.
• "The Ultimate Lemon Butter Bar," October 15, 2008.
  
• "A Mysterious Midnight Bite," July 8, 2008.
  

Inaugural Bakextravaganza, Part I: Cookies

A friend of mine is hosting an inauguration party tonight for 150 people and she asked if I would be interested in supplying the baked goods. Seeing as how I had plenty of time to bake (I had last Friday off from work as part of my regular work schedule, as well as the weekend, Martin Luther King Jr. day, and today, which is a holiday for all D.C. federal employees), I thought, why not?

In sketching out my baking plans for the party, I figured that I needed to supply at least three baked goods a person, and I proposed an assortment that didn't include very many cookies. It's generally a lot more efficient to make a few pans of bars than to make an equivalent number of servings of cookies, and besides, I didn't want to spend the entire weekend squeezing dough out of cookie scoops. I was recently diagnosed with carpal tunnel in both wrists, and the repetitive motion of releasing dough from a scoop causes a lot of wrist strain.

The original baked goods plan included biscotti, which I make pretty regularly, and which can be made far in advance without any compromise in taste or texture. However, I made the unfortunate decision to try out some new biscotti recipes, and after three disastrous attempts (trying one recipe from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours, and two different recipes from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion), I decided that biscotti just wasn't in the cards and I moved on.

The final cookie count for the party was thirteen dozen, consisting of Chocolate Chip Cookies, Spice Sugar Cookies, and Peanut Butter Cookies with Chocolate Chunks (I always bake with Skippy, which is not implicated in the current FDA warning on peanut butter and salmonella). In retrospect, I probably should have picked some cookies that were a little more varied in appearance, as these all had the same general color scheme and looked pretty similar... But at least I had some interesting bars and cupcakes to throw into the overall baked goods mix. More on those in the posts to follow!


Recipes:

• Chocolate Chip Cookies from the New York Times, July 9, 2008.
  
• Spice Sugar Cookies from epicurious.com.
• Peanut Butter Cookies With Chocolate Chunks from epicurious.com.
  

Previous Posts:

• "Measuring Up the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie," July 11, 2008.
• "A Cookie Quest," July 29, 2008.
• "A Baking Beauty Secret," June 15, 2008.
  

My Cup(cakes) Runneth Over: Mini Red Velvet Cupcakes

I'm planning on making some mini red velvet cupcakes this weekend, and I wanted to go through a dry run so that I could figure out how many cupcakes each batch of batter would make, and how much frosting I would need. So on Tuesday night I made a batch of Cake Man Raven's Red Velvet Cake recipe, and I ended up with 68 mini cupcakes, far more than I had expected. These little gems, each containing only two bites, finished baking quickly, in 14 minutes.

I made a double batch of my favorite cream cheese frosting from the Pumpkin-Raisin Bar recipe on epicurious.com and used a pastry bag with a large round tip to pipe on frosting (this is much faster than using a spatula to frost each cupcake by hand). There was just barely enough frosting to go around; next time I'll probably make 2.5 batches of frosting to make sure each cupcake gets a great big dollop of cream cheese goodness.

These cupcakes were just as tasty as the layer cake form, although the fact that they had a much higher ratio of frosting to cake made the overall flavor profile a little sweeter. I had so many cupcakes that I gave some to Tom to pass onto a friend and I also packed a box to give to my friend Jim. On my way back from lunch in Penn Quarter (where I made the baked goods handoff to Jim), I walked right by the Red Velvet Cupcakery, the latest addition to the D.C. cupcake scene. (The cupcake craze has only recently hit D.C., finally reaching a level of social consciousness where the Washington Post devoted an eight-week series to the search for the town's best cupcake in the fall of 2008. The winner? The Chocolate Ganache Cupcake from Georgetown Cupcake. I have never been to Georgetown Cupcake, but the Post printed the winning recipe, so it's in my queue of recipes to get to some day.)

I was tempted to go into Red Velvet Cupcakery to try their namesake cupcake on for size (after all, since they sell several flavors of cupcakes but decided to name the place "Red Velvet," you have to figure that red velvet should be their best flavor, right?), but I was still stuffed from lunch... the red velvet cupcake tasteoff will have to wait until another day!

Recipes:

• Red Velvet Cake from Cake Man Raven, recipe available online here.
• Frosting recipe from Pumpkin-Raisin Bars, from epicurious.com.

Previous Post: "Holiday Party Recap, Part III: Ready For a Throwdown!," December 17, 2008.

Quick Bites: Swedish Visiting Cake and The Baked Brownie

I'm trying to run through a few new recipes before a big baking project I have lined up for this weekend (more on that later), so on Monday night I decided to try two recipes that both looked quick and easy. The first was "Swedish Visiting Cake" from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home To Yours. Greenspan is a highly-regarded baker who also wrote the companion book to the Julia Child PBS series of the same name, Baking With Julia.

The Swedish Visiting Cake was a simple almond cake baked in a cast-iron skillet (or, in my case, a 9-inch cake pan). The list of ingredients is straightforward (sugar, lemon zest, eggs, salt, vanilla, almond extract, flour, melted butter, sliced almonds) and the batter can be made in one bowl without a mixer. The finished cake was golden brown and lovely, with a crunchy almond and sugar-sprinkled top. The interior was delightfully moist and slightly chewy. I was not a huge fan of this cake; my major complaint was that the lemon was too pronounced, upstaging the almond flavor. The first step in the recipe is to add the lemon zest to the sugar and to "blend the zest into the sugar with your fingers until the sugar is moist and aromatic." If I ever make this cake again, I will just stir the lemon zest into the batter with the rest of the ingredients.

This cake was so quick to mix and bake that I had plenty of time to also make a batch of "The Baked Brownie" (so-named not because they are baked in the oven, but because the recipe is from Baked bakery and coffeeshop in Brooklyn). Apparently Oprah has listed The Baked Brownie as one of her favorite things in O Magazine.

The Baked Brownie recipe is very simple (melt together butter, chocolate, and instant espresso powder in a double boiler, add sugar and brown sugar, whisk in eggs and vanilla, and stir in flour, salt, and cocoa powder). The brownie is lightly fudgy and tastes like childhood -- a beautifully simple but deeply chocolate treat. It would be spectacular with ice cream. I think this will become my standard plain brownie recipe from now on.

Recipes:

• "Swedish Visiting Cake" from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.
• "The Baked Brownie" from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.
  

Right on Time: Root Beer Bundt Cake

On Thursday afternoon, we made some last-minute plans for an office party the following day. (The occasion? Everyone completing their time reports before the end of the quarter deadline. This was a momentous event indeed, definitely worthy of a celebration!) I didn't have a lot of time to bake something on Thursday night, so I decided to try a quick recipe from Baked, Root Beer Bundt Cake.

The cake recipe calls for 2 cups of root beer, 1 cup of cocoa, and both white and dark brown sugar. It baked up very dense and fudgy, with a deep, heavy, chocolate aroma. The frosting is a mixture of melted dark chocolate, softened butter, salt, root beer, cocoa powder, and powdered sugar, pulsed together in the food processor (a slightly unusual technique, but it works surprisingly well). The frosting was also deeply chocolately. The recipe made a lot of frosting, more than I actually was able to fit onto the cake.

No one who tasted the finished frosted cake could tell that it had root beer in it, despite the cookbook's claim that the root beer flavor is "extremely pronounced." However, everyone loved the cake regardless. It was very tasty, and the delicious frosting made it even better. The cake might not have tasted like root beer, but I definitely agree with the cookbook's commentary that this it screams out for a big scoop of vanilla ice cream. I think that would be the perfect accompaniment to this rich treat!

Recipe: "Root Beer Bundt Cake," from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.

A First Foray into "Baked": No Baking Required

I received a few cookbooks for Christmas, although the one I decided I had to delve into first was Baked: New Frontiers in Baking by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. I was especially delighted to receive this book from Tom because I had never heard of it before, which is sort of rare when it comes to baking cookbooks. Lewis and Poliafito founded Baked bakery and coffeeshop in Brooklyn (Lewis's previous venture was Chocolate Bar in Manhattan -- a shop that also spawned a cookbook that I happen to own). The cookbook has lots of beautiful photos and some great-looking recipes, so last night I tried my first recipe from the book, Peanut Butter Crispy Bars.

Ironically, these bars require no baking. The cookbook describes these treats as a very grown-up Rice Krispies Treat and asserts that they are hands down, the most popular refrigerated bar they make at the bakery (of course, never having been to the bakery, I'm not quite sure how strong of an endorsement that is).

The bars have a bottom crust of Rice Krispies cereal, held together with a cooked mixture of water, sugar, and corn syrup. On top of that comes a layer of milk chocolate melted together with smooth peanut butter. On top of that is a chocolate icing that is a mixture of dark chocolate, butter, and a touch of corn syrup melted together. So while each layer requires use of the stove, you never need to turn on the oven.

The finished bars were just lovely. They cut cleanly (the bars are refrigerated before cutting so that the chocolate layers become solid) and the chocolate components were as smooth as silk. The texture was a wonderful contrast of crispy crunchy cereal with super-creamy and luscious chocolate, with a bit of the mouth-tickling sensation of peanut butter thrown in. The bars did in fact taste like a decadent chocolate and peanut-butter flavored Rice Krispies Treat. My only complaint is that I think the recipe makes a bit too much liquid to mix in with the Rice Krispies. There was quite a bit of sticky goo accumulated beneath the bars, which was a little messy. But I'm glad to add this recipe to my collection and excited to keep baking through the rest of the cookbook!

Recipe: "Peanut Butter Crispy Bars" from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking by Matt Lewis and Reanto Poliafito.

Ipso Fatto Instant Photos: Pumpkin-Raisin Bars (Without the Raisins)

Recipe: Pumpkin-Raisin Bars from epicurious.com.

Previous Posts:

• "An Early Autumnal Treat," June 24, 2008.
• "My Maiden Voyage on the S.S. New Kitchen," October 5, 2008.
  

A Sweet Start to a New Year: Chocolate Soufflé with Pistachio Ice Cream

Tom and I decided to invite a few friends over for a New Year's Day dinner. As usual, Tom handled all of the cooking (to start, a salad with green apples and pomegranates, followed by a main course of ham accompanied by collard greens, Brussels sprouts, carrots and scalloped potatoes), and I handled dessert. For a small number of people being served in my own home, I thought it was a good opportunity to make Warm Chocolate Soufflés with Pistachio Ice Cream.

This is a great recipe; the ice cream is absolutely delicious and the soufflés are not difficult to make. The particular beauty of this version is that the soufflés can be made ahead and held in the refrigerator. Then when it's time for dessert, just pop the soufflés in a preheated 400 degree oven for 20 minutes, and voilà! Yummy, warm, and beautiful dessert!

Recipes: Warm Chocolate Soufflés with Pistachio Ice Cream from epicurious.com.
Previous Post: "Dinner for David," July 6, 2008.

Ipso Fatto Instant Photos: Giant Chocolate Toffee Cookies

I made these as a New Year's Eve party hostess gift. Tom said that they were extra chewy, like chocolate-toffee jerky (I think he meant that as a compliment!).

Recipe: Giant Chocolate-Toffee Cookies from epicurious.com.
Previous Post: "A Cookie For the Road," June 22, 2008.