Not your grandma’s red velvet cake – Beet red velvet cupcakes

Underneath the eyeball candies are mini red velvet cupcakes. Not the traditional red velvet of gallons of red food coloring but instead a concoction I experimented with some time back in order to make these healthier and perhaps a bit less toxic. I have had my share of beet-related mishaps – mostly because I cannot seem to apply myself when it comes to the complexities of an electric juicer (and thus spray beet juice across the kitchen before realizing the pitcher is not securely under the spout). Beets make cake batter genuinely and naturally red. Beets do the same with kitchen floors and countertops – be careful.

I was sorry when I delivered these to my office – a colleague got excited, exclaiming how she loves red velvet, but I had to deflate her enthusiasm, announcing that in fact these are beet cupcakes and probably not at all what she was used to/looking forward to.

(Beet) Red velvet cupcakes
3/4 to 1 cup of beet pulp
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 1/2 teaspoons rice vinegar
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 teaspoon salt (if using unsalted butter)
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/4 cup flour
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon cocoa (unprocessed, natural cocoa powder)

(To make the beet puree, I used a juicer. I peeled four or five beets, threw those into the juicer, which separates juice from pulp. I used the resulting 1 cup of beet pulp and then used some of the beet juice to achieve the right level of liquid – I did not measure this, so it might be a trial and error process for others who attempt this.)

Preheat oven to 350F/175C.

Mix the beet pulp, lemon juice, rice vinegar together.

In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs, then the vanilla. Add the beet puree mixture.

Sift together dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder, cocoa) and mix the dry mixture into the butter-beet mixture alternately with the buttermilk. If the batter is really thick, you can add a bit of the beet juice from the juicing process. You do not want this batter to be too thin, however.

Bake for about 20 to 25 minutes in lined cupcake pans. A toothpick inserted in center of the cupcakes should come out clean. Cool in pan on rack for two or three minutes before removing the cupcakes from the pan and allowing them to cool completely on racks.

Frost with cream cheese frosting.

Finally fruity cake – Vanilla cupcakes with passion fruit curd filling and coconut frosting

Matcha green tea cupcakes with raspberry filling and raspberry Swiss meringue buttercream

I don’t have a great relationship with matcha/green tea. In my geekier days attending Japanese-language camp in high school, I volunteered for a week-long culture course in the Japanese tea ceremony. These provided my first tastes of the very bitter and not entirely pleasant (to my inexperienced palate) taste of traditionally prepared matcha. (The tea ceremony itself, like most Japanese rituals, is complex, beautiful and takes basically forever to learn for tea ceremony… practitioners and aficionados.)

I have also chronicled my history with the Green Tea Asshole, an unpleasant man who rears his head in my life once or twice a year demanding “answers” as to what I am doing with my life. He offered me a canister of matcha when he visited me once many years ago – and that went to good use in baking some other matcha concoction.

A lovely Canadian friend sent me a new supply of matcha, with which I have been doing several other matcha-baking experiments.

This time I made green tea cupcakes and filled them with raspberry filling and made some raspberry Swiss meringue buttercream frosting to top them off.

Cupcakes
1 1/2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons matcha green tea powder
1 cup butter
4 large eggs
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla

Cream butter and sugar, add eggs and vanilla. Sift dry ingredients (flour, baking powder and matcha) together and then add them alternately with the milk. Put into cupcake papers and bake at 160C for 15 to 17 minutes (although in baking these later I went for 170C because I ended up with a gooey mess at 160C), until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Green tea cupcakes make a rather dense texture (not dense after the first time I baked them… they came out more like sponge cake, and I don’t know why). Let cool completely and then hollow out the cupcakes (keep the tops). Fill the cupcakes with seedless raspberry jam (next time I make these, I am going to try cherry jam) and replace the tops. Prepare your icing.

Raspberry Swiss meringue buttercream
4 egg whites
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
24 tablespoons unsalted butter
raspberry preserves (preferably seedless – enough to suit your taste and maintain the right, spreadable texture)
coconut (you can sprinkle the top of the cupcake with coconut if you like – it’s optional)

Over a double boiler, whisk egg whites and sugar. When sugar is dissolved, transfer the mixture to the bowl of a stand mixer – beat with the whip attachment until soft to medium peaks form. Switch to paddle attachment, start beating and adding in the butter a few tablespoons at a time. Once you have a frosting-like texture (which can take a long while – the mixture will possibly look curdled, like it cannot possibly come together, at some point, but it will come together – just keep beating), add the vanilla. When nearly ready, add the raspberry preserves and mix until well-combined.

Frost the cupcakes with the prepared frosting.

Vegan chocolate cupcakes with pretzel crust

Laziness of baking follow-up

BaKed with Love – Anti-Valentine Bake for Gothenburg

On offer in Gothenburg today – nothing experimental for once, although one of the frostings seems off – cherry oat bars, cranberry pistachio biscotti, M&M cookies, lemon cake, Oreo chocolate cupcakes with cookies-and-cream frosting, Raffaello cupcakes with vanilla frosting, Anzac biscuits and shortbread. All fairly safe stuff as an intro.

Banoffee cupcakes – Baking experiments to eat at one’s own risk

Beware of baking experiments. As I have written before, I don’t taste any of these things, so the experiments especially are… well, totally experimental. This means that no one has tasted them before they end up on offer in the workplace, making my colleagues unwitting (even if entirely willing) lab rats. People take their taste buds into their own, eh, hands, every time – although this rings true more starkly when I am making something I have never attempted before.

Behold the banoffee cupcake, which is aptly named for banana and toffee mixed together. I made a lightly toffee-flavored cupcake and will fill it with caramel and banana and frost with dulce de leche Swiss buttercream. I doubt that this will be the final word in banoffee cupcake experimentation, however.

Banoffee cupcakes
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
12 tablespoons butter, softened
1 1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup neutral-flavored vegetable oil
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup dulce de leche (or some kind of thick caramel)

Preheat oven to 175C.

Whisk dry ingredients together and set aside. Cream butter and sugar, add the eggs, one at a time, scraping the sides of the bowl after each addition. Add the vanilla and oil. Alternately add the dry ingredient mixture with the buttermilk in three additions. Add the half-cup of dulce de leche.

Put batter into cupcake liners and bake – probably about 15 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. I used larger cupcake liners and it took closer to 35 minutes for mine to bake through.

To assemble, you can decide for yourself how best to deal with it. I am going to cut the center out of the cupcake and fill with dulce de leche and banana slices and frost with dulce de leche frosting. Maybe sprinkle some graham cracker crumbs and/or crushed Daim candy on top. We shall see.

This would be infinitely easier in cake form rather than individual cupcakes.

Staggeringly drunk cupcakes: Guinness cupcakes with Baileys Swiss meringue frosting – take two

October baking ambitions

Chocolate malted milk cupcakes with Maltesers candy

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The Wolf Eel

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cupcakes

Not your grandma’s red velvet cake – Beet red velvet cupcakes

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Finally fruity cake – Vanilla cupcakes with passion fruit curd filling and coconut frosting

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Matcha green tea cupcakes with raspberry filling and raspberry Swiss meringue buttercream

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Vegan chocolate cupcakes with pretzel crust

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Laziness of baking follow-up

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BaKed with Love – Anti-Valentine Bake for Gothenburg

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Banoffee cupcakes – Baking experiments to eat at one’s own risk

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Staggeringly drunk cupcakes: Guinness cupcakes with Baileys Swiss meringue frosting – take two

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October baking ambitions

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Chocolate malted milk cupcakes with Maltesers candy

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