A Rosy Little Birthday

This week I made these cupcakes as a special order for a friend! His mom’s birthday was coming up and the request was simple (or so I thought): 24 red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. I really wanted to forgo the food coloring and make the cake naturally red, but I tried several recipes out beforehand and failed miserably each time (more details here). So I decided to try out a boxed cake mix just to see what they were like.

Turns out they were moist, a little chocolatey, and super red. I am not ready to give up on RV just yet, but I am still not sure what the hype is about. Honestly, I’ve come to the conclusion that red velvet is basically just an excuse to eat cream cheese frosting! Which, I think is generally way too heavy, so I beat mine for a ridiculously long time so that it had an almost whipped consistency to it.

Overall, I think these cupcakes actually tasted great, but I had the most fun decorating them! I am learning so much about working with fondant and gum paste, but I am still so far from being any good at it! I can’t wait to look back at my photos and recipes to see all the progress I’ve made days/weeks/months/years from now— it’s going to be so rewarding!

I used this video tutorial for the roses (mine just have less petals). Do you have any experience with either red velvet or fondant? It seems I picked two pretty tricky things to combine all at once!

Apple Pie Yeast Braid

If I were Dr. Frankenstein then this bread would be my monster. It’s a mashup of a few of my absolute favorite recipes. The first is a yeast bread that my best friend, Shannon, introduced me to. She taught me how to make it almost a year ago and I’ve only just now got around to baking it again. If there’s one thing we love most about it, it’s how easy it is to customize. It originally calls for apricots and almonds but I have never actually made it that way. I had a hankering for my favorite Apple Pie Coffee Cake but I wanted something a bit different, so I decided to combine the two recipes into one great big masterpiece. (You might remember this cake from when I tweaked it to make my lemon blueberry version.) So with a little vegan science and some improvisation I was soon on my way to a potluck with the prettiest bread I’ve ever made!

Look how proud I am! If you think this recipe sounds good (then you’re right!) but you’re nervous about making bread, then all I can say is . . . DON’T BE! It’s not as intimidating as it sounds and this really is the perfect beginner recipe. (It just looks way fancier than it is!)

The dough is the exact same recipe as the original. But for the inside I used one can of apple pie filling and a little bit of a sugar + spice mixture I created. The mix is equal to:

1/2 tsp cardamom + 1/2 tsp cinnamon + 3 tablespoons turbinado cane sugar 

Just sprinkle a little bit on each 3rd of dough before you spread the apple pie filling. (You should have enough left to cover the top of the loaf.)

I accidentally  rolled my dough out a little too long which means I didn’t have much to “fold over” so I pinched it together instead.

The pinching technique proved to be a rather messy one that worked to my advantage since I wanted to coat the loaf with the remaining sugar + spice. I had some trouble with the strands coming open while braiding (since I shoved so much filling in them!) so I flipped the whole loaf over once I was done braiding, that way if they split open during baking then the top would remain intact and pretty. So after I braided the strands it was nice and gooey and I just sprinkled the mixture on top.

Just bake for 40 minutes and voila! A delicious (and rather impressive looking) loaf of my very own creation: Apple Pie Yeast Bread.  

If you can, wait for the loaf to cool before slicing. If not, then make sure to eat it with a huge scoop of your favorite vanilla bean ice cream! Because what’s better than dessert bread? Dessert bread a la mode, duh!

circle plate: vintage / aluminum ruffle platter: HandPicked, Inc.

Have you ever made bread before? I’m a beginner but it’s becoming one of my favorite things to bake. . . thanks to this recipe!

Behind the Scenes : How to Make A Mean Dirt Cupcake

For an aspiring baker, not much is worse than throwing out 22 cupcakes. Unless those cupcakes are evidence of your greatest baking fail to date, in which case you immediately delete all photos and evidence you ever made them and then try not to publicly mourn all the beautiful wrappers you wasted. End. Of. Story.

Or, you suck it up and decide to share your great big, terrible, horrible, no good, very bad experience with the world  your blog followers. I mean, your life isn’t all sunshine and unicorns, now is it? Well neither is mine.

So let’s talk about last night. It started out so perfect: recipe in hand (or more accurately: recipe pulled up in an email I had sent to myself weeks ago), ingredients all in a row, spirits high, and Fleetwood Mac playing. Little did I know, I was ready for what would later become known as The Battle of the Red Velvet Cake.
But I didn’t know of the impending doom, so I was excited. I was even extra excited to use the vintage geese measuring cups my mom gave me. Look how cute they are all in a row, ready to help out! I can hardly stand it!
And then things only got better. I finally used the beautiful ceramic juicer I bought while I was in Gatlinburg last summer. Ahh yes: supporting handmade goods, overcoming my grudge against Red Velvet cake— things were going well!
And then I did something I never do: I followed a recipe exactly how it was written. I was attempting to make a Red Velvet Cake. But not just any Red Velvet Cake. I was not interested in a bland, toxic red excuse to eat cream cheese frosting. I wanted a vegan version of the historic cake I had come across in my research: rich brown sugar, a delicate crumb, and naturally red with a cooked flour frosting. So when it called for beets, I didn’t blink an eye.

I opened those babies up and was immediately mesmerized by the magenta goodness. “This might actually work,” I thought to myself. But having never eaten a beet before, I eagerly took a huge whiff of the can to see what I was getting into. Although it smelled like damp earth after a heavy rain, I didn’t blink an eye. I mean, I routinely made brownies from a can of black beans, how much worse could these beets be? 

So I threw them in the food processor and watched as they spun into a glorious red puree. I carefully added all the ingredients. I even sifted the dry into the wet to get my beautiful batter. Only thing to do now was a taste test! One lick of that spoon and my heart sank. But I didn’t give up! So what if it was a little tangy? That’s why most recipes called for buttermilk, vinegar, or lemon juice. It’s not like it’s supposed to be chocolate cake! I convinced myself it was supposed to be like that. Oh and the obvious dirt aftertaste? That would cook out. It. Totally. Would. So I baked them up, peering through the oven window to make sure they were rising. And boy, how the smell fooled me! Over the next 20 minutes my apartment was transformed into a small town cupcake shop! I was filled with hope when the timer went off. And I was so proud of those puffy, naturally red little cakes. I put in the second batch while the first cooled. As soon as it they were in the oven I reached for my masterpiece, pulled back the wrapper, and took a huge bite.

And as soon as it hit my tongue I spit it right back out. Right. In. The. Trash. How could something even taste SO BAD? How could something I made taste so bad? I had insulted myself. Oh, it was awful. It was like a moist, fluffy mudpie made with lemon juice instead of water. It was worse than the time one of the baker’s at work left the sugar out of the pumpkin cupcakes. It was simply embarrassing.

I wanted to give up. I gagged every time I looked into the kitchen at those sad, sad cakes staring back at me. If I didn’t have a special order of Red Velvet Cupcakes coming up in April for a friend’s mom’s birthday, then I probably would give up. But I have two cans of beets left, a few new recipes, more tips from various cake forums, and a huge grudge against Red Velvet Cake that I’m trying to fight. I just hope it’s enough to get me through the next month.

A Very Colorful Birthday

When I was in Gatlinburg this summer, I met a lot of wonderful people. Luckily, one of my roommates while I was there happened to be from the same town as me, so even though we have both left, we still get to hangout.

Kayla is one of the few people I have met that not only has similar interests as me, but just as much energy as I do. We even got to to take a pop-up bookmaking class together (you can see her awesome book here).

We also don’t take ourselves too seriously:

I knew I had to make something special for her 21st birthday, so I decided on these Rainbow Nerds Cupcakes from Confessions of a Cookbook Queen. After all, what’s more grown up than Kool-Aid and nerds baked into sweets?

I am not a fan of grape, so I tweaked this recipe a bit. I used this vanilla cupcake recipe and this frosting recipe and I didn’t put any nerds in the batter. Besides that I tried to stick to the original but I failed and used regular Kool-Aid instead of the instant kind, and let me tell you, these babies are sour! They taste exactly like nerds: TANGY!

Even though I technically made these wrong, they were still a lot of fun (and I learned a great deal). I mean, each one looks like a little party!

I really recommend branching out and trying this recipe. I can’t even imagine how much more awesome they would be if had done them correctly so make sure you get the right stuff! I just feel like the regular ‘ole vanilla/chocolate cupcakes can get a little boring; it’s nice to try something that’s more of a novelty treat.

What do you do when you botch a new recipe? Start over? Serve it anyway? Compost it? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

ConGRADulations: Hats Off Cupcakes!

On Saturday, I became the first person in my family to graduate college. I made these adorable cupcakes for the post-ceremony snack party. They are very simple, and extremely charming when lined up in little rows. These are strawberry cupcakes with lemon buttercream frosting, but you can use whatever flavors and coordinating school colors you like.

Ingredients:  

• 18 strawberry cupcakes
• 9 graham crackers
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 2 tbsp lemon juice (+ additional water)
• 2 strawberry fruit roll ups
• 1/2 batch lemon frosting

1. In a medium bowl, combine the powdered sugar and lemon juice. The mixture will be thick. Add one tablespoon of warm water at a time to create a smooth lemon glaze. Add food coloring until desired look is achieved. Break the graham cracker in half, creating 18 squares. Dip one side of  the cracker in the glaze and then place on a cooling rack to set.

2. Unwrap a cupcake, turn it upside down, and place it back in the wrapper. Repeat 17 times. Spread a small amount of lemon frosting on each one. I piped this frosting using a Wilton #23 tip because I wanted to put little buttons on the top of each hat later.

3. Place one lemon glazed graham cracker on each cupcake. Cut the fruit roll up into approximately 3 inch lengths for the tassels. Cut the end of each piece into strips before rolling it to create fringed tassels.

4.  Place one tassel on each cupcake. If the tassel is too long, just eat some of it! Then pipe a round little button in the center of each.

5. If your glaze has not set, allow them to chill in the fridge over night. They are best served within a day.