Valentines Day 2012

Red Velvet kicked up a notch!

What's better than a homemade red velvet cake ball or even a red velvet cupcake on it's own? Read on to find out! 

Nothing screams Valentines Day more than the Southern favorite red velvet cake! When my husband requested cake balls for his Valentines Day treat, I knew I had to step it up a notch, specifically when he asked if they could be red velvet cakeballs! My answer, without even thinking about the planning element, was a resounding "Of course I can do that!" 

At the time when I agreed to undertake the baking/making of such red velvet creations I had forgotten (possibly purposely blocked out) the last time I made anything red velvet, and all of the times before that. Unfortunately when making something with red food coloring you have to be so incredibly careful not to get the food coloring everywhere. Unlike other food colors, possibly because of it's potentially sinister appearance, it always somehow makes it out of the bowl and onto something making it look as though an episode of the popular television series Dexter might have been filmed right there in your kitchen! When I say you have to be careful when making red velvet desserts of any kind, I certainly am being truthful. Please consider yourself warned. 

When in the planning stages of making the red velvet cake to later be formed into balls I knew there was only one recipe option to go with and that is the one recipe I have turned to for Red Velvet Cake ever since I first made it a few years ago. It can be found at the following link. You'll notice that I have linked to another bloggers page entitled Smitten Kitchen. I am a huge fan of this blog and follow her posts regularly.

When trying to cut the recipe down to the amount to only make roughly 12 cake balls I finally decided to throw that idea out the window. I chose, as a personal feat and challenge, to create a moist as-can-be red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting adorned with a dark chocolate enrobed red velvet cakeball garnished with freshly toasted pecan pieces! I think you'll see below that my challenge was not only successful but tasty and visually appealing as well! 

Below is a photo of the ingredients for the cake itself. I went ahead and baked 20 cupcakes and a 9" round cake that was later broken down into cake balls. You will notice that I used a tasteless gel food coloring instead of liquid food coloring. I find that gel food coloring is somewhat easier to manage than liquid. Often times, when using gel food coloring, the red color you get in the cake isn't as deep as if you use liquid. If you're looking for a truer red color, I would suggest using the liquid variety of food coloring. 

Below is a photo of the ingredients for the cream cheese frosting, with the recipe also found at the link above. I chose to double the recipe as I'd rather have too much frosting than not enough! It is truly one of the greatest cream cheese frostings I've ever made because it's not too sweet and has just the right amount of tang so that you know that the cream cheese is in there. Who would think that only four simple ingredients would make such a delicious and easy frosting? You will notice that I had to use a different variety of vanilla extract for the frosting as I sadly ran out of the my favorite Nielsen-Massey when making the cake. 

Cupcakes fresh out of the oven cooling on an oven rack waiting to be frosted. 

Frosted cupcakes! I do so love my new large Wilton tip! If you've never frosted anything with a pastry bag I highly recommend it! Oh and with that I highly recommend the disposable pastry bags for easier cleanup. 

Because I had a lot of cupcakes I took a few to work and received many rave reviews from my co-workers! A couple of them even exclaimed that these particular cupcakes were the most amazing cupcakes they've ever tasted! I decorated them for work as shown below with a simple toasted pecan. 

Finally Here are the formed and refrigerated cakeballs ready to be dipped into the chocolate. 

For coating cakeballs I personally use Merckens Candy Melts which I personally purchase off of Amazon. They are truly, in my opinion, the best and not available for purchase anywhere in Dallas that I know of. 

Below is a photo of a constructed cupcake adorned with a freshly made cakeball. 

Another angle so you can see how pretty they turned out!

I feel it's safe to say that my Valentine was quite pleased with his Valentines Day treat! Below is a photo of a cupcake and cakeball cut in half to show you consistency. So incredibly moist and not too sweet!

The only change that I would make when making these again would be to make the cake balls slightly smaller, but other than that they came out exactly as I expected which was PERFECT! 

Super Bowl Cupcakes!

For Giants Fans ONLY - I kid, I kid!

Well, it's me, coming atcha live from Dallas, Texas. The land of the strangest Winter ever known to man! Last year at this time there was approximately 8 inches of snow/ice on the ground and this year it is significantly warmer. Just the other day the high was 75, oh how I wish I was kidding! I think I'm one of the few native born Texans who actually likes a real winter. I love the East Coast, New York to be more specific, so it's fitting that we are a New York GIANTS household!  When we were invited to a Super Bowl party recently I naturally asked what I could bring!? Happily I accepted the suggestion of my bringing a baked good of some sort! You know me, well at least I hope you REMEMBER me because of my blogging absence, I only bake from scratch!

I wanted to make something New York-ish for the New York Giants fans, including my husband and myself, attending the Super Bowl Party. The colors of the New York Giants were out, I'm not going to mess with fondant, I just think it's gross, and I didn't want to make the usual or dare I say expected, red or even blue velvet cake!

I have a confession to make, I have never made a Cheesecake or more specifically a New York style Cheesecake. I have made Cheesecake bars before but never an actual real-live bonafide Cheesecake using a real live spring form pan! I considered it and I considered it some more, but then decided it was not the time for me to get experimental and try making a Cheesecake from scratch. 

I eventually, after much thought, decided on the Magnolia Bakery Vanilla Cupcake with Chocolate Buttercream. Magnolia Bakery is a pretty famous New York Bakery, so it sort of goes along with the theme! 

For the cupcakes I wanted to somehow fashion the Frosting to look like a mound of dirt on a football field topped with a little bit of Vanilla butter cream "grass" and then topped with these adorable little football's that I purchased at Party City! Yeah, I'm sort of a dork, admitting to it is half the battle, right?

As I've mentioned the Magnolia Bakery cookbook previously and expect to again in the future here is the link again to purchase the cookbook for yourself! It's truly one of my favorites and I promise if you order it you will LOVE the recipes! Unfortunately, I'm not sure why, Amazon still doesn't have it, but Overstock does at this link!

A picture of the ingredients for the cupcakes themselves is below. Pretty easy ingredients and you'll notice both AP Flour and Self-Rising Flour are used in the recipe hence eliminating the need to add salt and baking powder. SCORE!

 

I made a small batch of Vanilla Buttercream frosting - ingredients shown below. I tinted it green for the grass. In retrospect purchasing the "leaf green" gel color might have been a mistake. I had noticed a darker green was available but I thought leaf green would work. I kept having to add more and more of the gel but thank goodness, because I was using gel, the flavor of the frosting was not compromised while I was trying to get it from a very un-appealing green to a grass-looking green.

 

A photo of the green buttercream is below. I did go a bit darker on the green after this photo was taken, but at least you get the idea of the small batch. 

I obviously made a much larger batch of the Chocolate Buttercream frosting as I was making 24 cupcakes. Allow me to assure you that as long as you use the appropriate equipment (KitchenAid Mixer) for the frosting recipe  you will not be disappointed with the amount of frosting you end up with. You might even have some extra! It lightens in color and is just simply amazing when you let it whip, with the paddle attachment, in your mixer for a good 5-6 minutes! Light, Fluffy and oh so tasty.

The ingredients of the absolutely delicious Chocolate Buttercream frosting are pictured below.

The freshly baked cupcakes are cooling off and boy do they look pretty. Of course I sampled a naked cupcake for texture and flavor. One of the things I like about these cupcakes is that they are NOT overly sweet allowing you, if you wish, to core and fill them with jam or some other sort of filling if you feel so compelled and you won't have something that's so sweet that it makes your teeth literally hurt! 

Once they were cool, I frosted the cupcakes with the delicious-ness of the Chocolate Buttercream using a large Wilton star tip! Obviously I could have left them alone at this point but I forged on!

I then adorned them with a bit of Vanilla (Green Grass) Buttercream and topped them with the miniature footballs! 

Freaking adorable if I do say so myself and great for any football sort of party, not just a Super Bowl Party in my humble opinion!

The taste of them is very good, not too sweet and just the perfect amount of chocolate. A friend of mine even told me that he doesn't ordinarily like frosting and loved this frosting. Yahoo!

An individual cupcake is pictured below!

A group of them is here!

Okay, one more picture!

What's the best part of the Super Bowl this year? The fact that the New York Giants emerged victorious! I like to think that my cupcakes were partially responsible for their victory as they were made with love in the hopes of their domination! 

Until next time my friends. Perhaps I'll get adventurous and even try to make a real New York Cheesecake! We'll see!