Whoopie Pies

My next attempt from the Hummingbird Bakery book was the Red Velvet Whoopie Pie recipe. This was one of my not-so-successful baking stories. The actual bake itself was fine, it was more the taste and flavour that was the problem here. This was down to a combination of things: the buttermilk and the amount of red food colouring. Buttermilk is not that readily available in the U.K. (or at least not where I live), so I had to create a buttermilk substitute (a mixture of milk and lemon juice), which will not have been as good as the actual thing. I also feel that 30ml of food colouring is far too much for the amount of cake mixture produced. 30ml does not even create the depth of red shown in the recipe photographs, and even makes the Whoopie Pies taste a bit strange, in my opinion anyway. The filling, however, was very nice indeed. It was extremely sweet (being full of Marshmallow Fluff, which is now easily available in supermarkets over here), but in small amounts makes for a perfect filling.

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

Undaunted by the problems I came across, I attempted the recipe for a second time, with less food colouring. The results, however, were the same, but with less depth of red colouring. As with the Red Velvet cake, it may be worth trying powdered food colouring instead, and trying to hunt down some real buttermilk. Any ideas on where to get hold of some?

Beckie.

Disaster Converted

So, it has often happened that my baking has been completely disastrous, with pastry leaking, treacle exploding in the oven, and bread dough completely failing to rise. However, there have been times when I have been able to convert disaster into something either good, or something at least slightly less disastrous.

One such example was this: I had been making some more red velvet cupcakes, and I was extremely idiotic and (using my novice-status as an excuse) overfilled the cupcake cases with the cake mixture. It meant that when they were finished baking, I did not have 16 perfect little cupcakes, but one large deformed mass of cake that had spread all over the baking tray. Needless to say, I was not impressed, and had one of my wailing fits. Luckily, I decided to pull myself together, and did an Internet search on what I could do with left-over cake.

I came across this recipe for cake-pops, along with other great ideas for what to do with leftover cake. As I had so much red velvet cake on my hands, I made some pink vanilla buttercream and got stuck in. I also did not have an ice-cream scoop to shape the cake-pops perfectly, so I used a teaspoon and my own fair (and meticulously washed) hands. I also used the teaspoon method when covering the cake-pops in chocolate. I used a blend of milk and dark chocolate to cover the cake, and then used to sprinkles I had in to decorate.

Waiting for them to set.

The finished product.

These cake-pops have proven to be very popular with my friends, and I have made variations on this basic recipe, including red velvet and whisky cake-pops (made with Old Pulteney 12 year old whisky). They were completely delicious, and because I limited the whisky to just two teaspoons, it didn't overwhelm the cake. I may have to try using rum or Cointreau another time. What do you reckon?

Beckie.

An Introduction - Red Velvet Cake

So I've been baking for about a year now, but it's taken me this long to actually get around to creating this blog.  Subsequent posts will detail my foray into the world of baking, looking at both the successes and the disasters.

Back in January 2012, having watched a lot of Ace of Cakes (a great programme documenting the incredible Charm City Cakes), I was intrigued by the idea of the red velvet sponge.  So I started my baking endeavours with a recipe from one of Lorraine Pascale's programmes, the Red Velvet cake. Obviously this recipe is for a three-tier cake, so I usually make the small or medium tier. I made several variations of this, including using the quantities for the small tier in order to make cupcakes:

Halloween Red Velvet Cake

Spring Red Velvet Cake

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Red Velvet Pyramid Cakes and Cupcakes

I usually make a simple vanilla-flavoured buttercream for these cakes, and buy the sugar-craft decorations, although I hope to start making my own sugar-craft soon. This cake is a fairly simple one to make, but tastes amazing. The only issue I came up against was the red food colouring - I have been using supermarket liquid food colouring, but I may have to think about using powdered food colouring, as I can never quite seem to get the colouring exactly right.  Does anyone have any recommendations?

Beckie.