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!