Have Your Red Velvet and Drink it Too!

When I first decided to blog about red velvet, many people said I was crazy. "How on earth can you just blog about red velvet?" they asked. "Won't that get a little repetitive, and well, boring?"

Little did they know this lesser known cake that fell out of favor in the 1970's due to the

Red No. 2 food dye scare

, would come back with a vengeance -- making its way into our favorite recipes, and subsequently, into our hearts.

To all of the naysayers, I present to you a red velvet cocktail shot. Yes, the cake we both know and love has now made its way into liquid form, to be consumed and enjoyed in 1oz doses. I think its safe to say that once a drink has been named after something, that it is officially mainstream. I'm not sure if a drink can possibly taste like red velvet, but its worth a shot (pun intended). You can find the recipe here.

Quite a Doozie

Doozie (also doozy): Something that is extraordinary. Often used in the context of troublesome, difficult or problematic, but can be used positively as well.

As a kid I always loved going to Great American Cookie Company and getting a Double Doozie cookie. Nothing was better than a generous helping of frosting sandwiched between two freshly baked cookies.

Now one could infer that Great American Cookie Company coined the name "Double Doozie" because it is in fact, wonderful and extraordinary, but I beg to disagree. I like to think that this cookie originated after someone was having a horrendous, albeit "doozie" of a day. One of those days when you feel like you just can't... possibly... make... one... more... decision.

Do I want a cookie? Yes. Do I want cake? Yes. Do I want an entire vat of icing? Yes. Indulgence kicks in and before you know it, you're sitting with an empty pint of ice cream, spoon-in-hand, wondering why you feel left unsatisfied. Yes, one of those kinds of days.

Well thankfully for the advent of the Double Doozie, you can have it all - cookie/cake/frosting - in one single serving. What's more, these red velvet sandwich cookies are super easy to make and only take 10 minutes in the oven.

For these cookies I started with Paula Deen's recipe but modified the cocoa and the frosting. While I liked the fluffy, cake texture of the cookies, next time I want to experiment and make them a bit more chewy, and perhaps add in some chocolate chips. If you're making these for a party or gathering I'd double the recipe - this one makes about 12 sandwich cookies. Happy Baking!


Ingredients:
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 tablespoons buttermilk
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon red food coloring
   
For the Cream Cheese Frosting:
1-8 ounce block cream cheese, softened
1 stick butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 box (approx 4 1/2 cups sifted) powdered sugar
 
Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. In a small bowl, mix together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a larger separate bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time. Beat in the buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla and red food coloring. Once combined, add the dry ingredients to the wet. Mix until thoroughly combined.

Onto a parchment lined sheet tray, drop batter using a small ice cream scoop (or a heaping tablespoon). Bake for 10 minutes, until baked through. Cookies should be cake-like and light. Allow to cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely. (I just slide the parchment from my baking sheet onto the wire rack).

In a large mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla together until smooth. Sift in the sugar and on low speed, beat until incorporated. Increase the speed to high and mix until very light and fluffy. Carefully spread the cream cheese frosting between 2 cooled cookies. Makes approximately 12 sandwich cookies.

"So My Chocolate Should Have a Temper???" And Other Baking Discoveries

I'm getting ready to leave for Cambodia in two weeks and promised some friends I would make them some more red velvet cake truffles before I left.

But wait, these cake truffles, well...they look just like your cake balls?

Ah, you are quite right! Needless to say, I was bringing said cake truffles to my production team at church. And although it may seem silly, I felt that cake 'truffles' were much more PC than cake 'balls'. Am I right?

While my last recipe went over quite well, I didn't think the chocolate bark from Kroger was befitting of the title truffle, so I decided to use a higher quality chocolate. For this task, no 'chocolate flavored candy' would do.

Actually I just happened to have some bars of Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate on hand, so I figured it couldn't be that complicated. And I was right...at first. I used a double boiler and melted the chocolate bars (it took me a total of 8 bars). I pulled my red velvet cake balls out of the freezer, dipped each in the chocolate and then laid them gently onto a fresh sheet of parchment. Easy-peasy. The Ghirardelli chocolate made a marked improvement in the flavor and they looked pretty good too. I took them into church and to work the following Monday. They received rave reviews and a few people even expressed interest in buying some over the holidays and for a wedding.

The following morning however, I woke up and my beautiful cake balls, err, truffles looked like this (pictured below). I didn't refrigerate them and they were stored in a sealed container. What could I have done wrong?

These truffles had a bad temper!

As it turns out, chocolate should be tempered when used for coating or dipping. Yes, I had no idea what that meant until I Googled it. Those heinous looking spots are called fat blooms, and despite their appearance the chocolate is still fine to eat. Fat blooms are an accumulation of cocoa butter crystals on the chocolate's surface. One of the common causes is due to poor (or complete disregard of) tempering of the chocolate. If chocolate is properly tempered it will appear much more glossy and will form a crisp shell.

So there you have it. I guess some things are good with a little temper. Lesson learned for the Velveteen Baker. To avoid my little snafu, you can watch this video from Ghirardelli about how to properly temper chocolate.

Much Ado About Cake Balls

Several weeks back I did a post on the JWT Atlanta blog called The Next Big Thing Could Actually be, Quite Small and asserted my prediction that cake balls were going to be all the rage. Well today I am here to tell you that they are.

I was at first a skeptic, but after making some red velvet cake balls from scratch I was truly convinced. There is something so heavenly about homemade red velvet cake and cream cheese icing mixed together, blanked by a nice, rich coating of chocolate.

I'm not going to lie, these little beauties are pretty labor intensive if you make them from scratch. As a matter of fact, you may start to hate me half way through this process and wonder why you ever decided to make these. But this is when you must press on. I assure you that all of your frustration will be worth its weight in gold once you bite into one of these.

Should you choose to make these, here are a few pointers I'd like to offer:
- Find a Kroger and buy a package of their white or dark chocolate bark. You can also use candy melts, but I found them much more difficult to work with.
- Invest in a candy dipping fork or set like this one. Spend a few more dollars on the metal dipping fork, as I rendered my plastic set useless trying to make these.
- You can use any red velvet cake and frosting recipe, but the following is one of my own. If you use another recipe you will need a 9x13 cake, about 2 cups of frosting and 1 or 2 packages of chocolate bark (depending on how much of a perfectionist you are).

For the red velvet cake:
2 1/2 c + 5T cake flour, sift before measuring
1 1/2 c sugar
1t baking soda
1t salt
1T + 1t natural cocoa powder, not dutch-processed
1 1/2 c vegetable oil
1 c buttermilk, room temperature
2 large eggs, room temperature
2T red food coloring
1t white distilled vinegar
1t pure madagascar vanilla

For the cream cheese icing:
2 1/4 c confectioners sugar sifted
4oz (1/2 a block) of cream cheese, softened
1/4 c mascarpone cheese
4T unsalted butter, softened
1/2t pure madagascar vanilla

For the candy coating:
1 or 2 packages of white, milk or dark chocolate bark (while I liked the way the white chocolate looked, the milk/dark chocolate tasted much better). I recommend getting two packages since the chocolate tends to get messy after a while with crumbs from the cake balls.

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour (pre-measured and sifted), sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt. In a large bowl, gently beat (speed 1 or 2 of a handheld mixer) the oil, buttermilk, eggs, vinegar, vanilla and red food coloring until blended. Add in the dry ingredients slowly and beat (speed of 1 or 2) until smooth. Pour into a lined and greased 9x13 pan.

Bake at 350 for approximately 30 minutes, turning once half way through. Cool in pan for no more than 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Once your cake has cooled, shave off any hard edges of the cake using a serrated knife.

In a large bowl beat the cream cheese, mascarpone, butter and vanilla until smooth. Slowly sift in the confectioners sugar and beat on a low speed until incorporated. Increase the speed until fully blended. Now here's the fun part. Take your cake and crumble it into a large mixing bowl. Add up to two cups of the cream cheese icing and mix with a spatula (or with your hands if you don't mind getting a little messy) until fully incorporated. It will be the consistency of a thick dough. Roll the mixture into balls and lay onto a cookie sheet. Place in the freezer until ready to coat in chocolate.

Before coating the cake balls must chilled, but not completely frozen. Melt the chocolate bark in microwave according to directions on package. Dip and cover one cake ball at a time using either a spoon or a dipping fork and place on a parchment lined cookie sheet. I like to take one or two cake balls out of the freezer at a time, as they are easier to work with that way. You can cover up any mishaps with a second coating (or drizzle) of chocolate once the first layer has hardened.

Good luck and let me know how it goes!

Waiting for Gâteau

Remember that book Waiting for Godot that many of us had to read in high school? Well I'm sure none of you felt like Vladimir and Estragon, eagerly awaiting my next post about gâteau (that's French for cake), but I'm here to assure you that I have several new reviews, recipes and stories to share.

In the last two weeks alone, I've done tastings in New Orleans and DC, as well as baked (and blogged about) the yummy cake balls pictured below. It's all coming soon, so don't forget to subscribe to my posts (top right under subscribe). You can also follow my updates on twitter or like The Velveteen Baker on Facebook.

Red Velvet: Tastes Like Chicken?

From bacon cake to bacon chocolate chip cookies, I've been seeing a lot of interesting meat-infused desserts lately, but this one takes the cake...and far too literally at that.

A San Francisco-based chef has invented red velvet fried chicken. Shocking, I know. And with cream cheese infused, garlic mashed potatoes nonetheless. Why I hesitate to understand this odd pairing is that you can't just make something red velvet.

See, red velvet is as much about texture as it is about flavor. Without its velvety, melt-in-your-mouth consistency, red velvet cake would simply be cake with an excessive amount of food dye. However you spin it - drenching and frying in red velvet - or tar and feathering in red velvet, does not a red velvet make.

Regardless of how jaded I may sound, I would like to commend American Cupcake with their creativity, and I am quite curious to hear any reviews of said red velvet fried chicken. If any of my ten whole visitors from the greater San Francisco area decide to check it out, please let me know. Heck, it may even be pretty good. But good, bad or indifferent, you can count on the Velveteen Baker for keeping the poultry out of her baked goods.

Give More, Save More (Calories)

After my last post I was overwhelmed with guilt. Even in the name of National Cheesecake Day, how could I possibly attempt to endorse something I hadn't yet tried myself? So off to The Cheesecake Factory I went for a slice of Stephanie's Ultimate Red Velvet Cake Cheesecake.

I found it rather annoying that their Any Slice, Half Price offer was only good for those dining in (go figure), but after going through the trouble of getting there and parking after 5pm on a Friday, I figured my dignity was well worth a $9 slice of cheesecake.

So how did it fare? While the layers of red velvet were relatively bland, being sandwiched between cheesecake and cream cheese icing certainly made the cake. Overall it was pretty good. Worth trying, but don't go expecting it will blow your mind.

I do think its great that they donate part of their proceeds to Feeding America, but you too directly through their site. Every dollar you donate helps provide 9 pounds of food and grocery products to men, women and children facing hunger in our country. So in lieu of buying a slice that translates to only 2.25 pounds of food, you can donate your $9 to Feeding America instead, which would provide 81 pounds of food.

Much better for the waistline, and for those in need.

Celebrate Cheesecake, Eat Red Velvet

In case you weren't aware, today is National Cheesecake Day. And what better way to celebrate cheesecake than by eating red velvet!

If you head over to The Cheesecake Factory today you can try their Stephanie’s Ultimate Red Velvet Cake Cheesecake™ for half-off with their Any Slice, Half Price promotion. While I haven't had an opportunity to sample their red velvet rendition, how could Cheesecake Factory's original cheesecake, layered with red velvet cake and topped with cream cheese frosting not be good?

In case that isn't reason enough, 25¢ from the sale of each red velvet slice will be donated to Feeding America, the nation's largest domestic hunger-relief charity.

National Cheesecake Day is only once a year, so go out and celebrate! You can afford the extra calories.