Oh Canada!

What's more patriotic than a red and white dessert to celebrate our country's birthday? How about red and white, red velvet cupcake?

Now originally, I was going to reply with some witty retort about red velvet cakes being a Southern recipe (because I've always associated them with the south), but I was wrong! Eaton's (if you are too young to know what Eaton's is, it was a big Canadian retailer - wow I feel old!) apparently used to carry a red velvet cake in their stores. So turns out they really are a patriotic dessert; not just in color, but in history!

So to celebrate Canada's 144th year, I decided to spend the day outside by the pool with anyone who wanted to join me. I was going to provide the food and pool, in hopes of some company in return! Since I didn't have any ridiculous red and white hats or horns, I decided to show my love of Canada by making a red and white dessert. Immediately, red velvet cupcakes popped into my head so I ran with it.

 

The recipe I used was from a popular food blog I follow, called Smitten Kitchen. Here is the recipe, altered for making 12 cupcakes (plus a couple extra mini ones):

Red Velvet Cupcakes

• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 1 cups canola oil
• 1 cup + 2 tbs granulated sugar
• 1.5 large eggs
• 1/4 tsp red gel food coloring dissolved in 3 tbsp of water (if you want a deeper red color, use 1/2 or 1 tsp)
• 3/4 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup + 2 tbs buttermilk
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/4 tsp white vinegar.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 12 muffin tins with paper liners.

2. Whisk flour and cocoa in a bowl.

3. Place oil and sugar in bowl of an electric mixer and beat at medium speed until well-blended. Beat in eggs one at a time. With machine on low, very slowly add red food coloring. (Take care: it may splash.) Add vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk in two batches. Scrape down bowl and beat just long enough to combine.

4. Place baking soda in a small dish, stir in vinegar and add to batter with machine running. Beat for 10 seconds.

5. Divide batter among pans and bake in preheated oven for 20-25 minutes.

Recently, I purchased a cupcake decorating set and in it came an injector/filling tip. With this tip I could squirt delicious fillings into my cupcakes so I decided to test it out! Unfortunately, I couldn't decide what kind of filling to use! I thought a fruit preserve would add a nice contrast of flavours, but that a chocolate ganache would compliment the cake nicely. How was I going to choose? Easy, I wasn't! I ended up filling half the cupcakes with raspberry jam using the injector tip, and putting chocolate ganache in the other half (I cored out a hole in the cake and poured in the ganache).

The raspberry jam was simply store bought, but this is the ganache recipe I used:

Chocolate Ganache Filling:

• 1/2 cup semisweet milk chocolate
• 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
• 4 ounces unsalted butter

1. Melt the ingredients in a saucepan over low heat. Stir the mixture constantly until melted and smooth. Be careful not to burn. Remove from the heat to cool completely.

Now, I had to add a fair amount of extra chocolate to my ganache because I found it tasted too buttery (probably another 1/4-1/2 cup, and I added a bit of dark chocolate). That may be because I switched the chocolate to milk chocolate (I had some picky chocolate eaters coming over...); but really, I don't see any problem with adding more chocolate to a recipe!

Finally, I had to make a frosting and I decided to go with the classic cream cheese frosting. I used this recipe, provided by Smitten Kitchen with her red velvet cake recipe:

Cream Cheese Frosting

• 4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
• 1/4 cup (1 stick) butter room temperature
• 1.5 cups confectioner’s sugar, sifted
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract

1. Place cream cheese and butter in a medium bowl. With a handheld electric mixer, beat until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.
2. Add sugar and vanilla. Beat, on low speed to combine. If too soft, chill until slightly stiff, about 10 minutes, before using.

As you'll come to learn in my baking adventures, frosting is the bane of my existence. No matter what I try, or the effort I put into it, my frosting always comes out wrong! And then I often have to go running to the grocery store to picking up a replacement! Well, needless to say, this frosting experience kept with the trend.

I don't know if it's because I halved the recipe, but the icing was like water! Ok, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it literally poured off my spoon. I tried chilling it at first (as the recipe said), but that didn't help. Then I tried adding more icing sugar, but then it started tasting too sweet. I couldn't even rely on my back up grocery store plan, because they were all closed for the holiday! So I had to work with what I had.

Originally I wanted to have a swirl of red and white frosting to continue with the patriotic theme, so I coloured half the frosting red (read pink) and left the other half white. As I strategically scooped the two frostings into the piping bag (hoping to have one on either side to get the dual-color effect), the white started pooling down to the bottom of my frosting bag! By the time I got the red frosting into the bag it was on top of the white! That was a little annoying! However, with a little clever manoeuvring on my part, I was able to work the red frosting down and pipe nice mounds of half-and-half frosting onto the cupcakes and everyone lived happily ever after.... Yeah right, I wish!

As I said frosting is my Achilles heel, so of course it wouldn't go so easily! As soon as I pulled my frosting bag out of the way, everything started to melt. The perfectly conical pile of frosting starting melting like the Wicked Witch of the West at a water park. Frosting was running down the sides of the cupcake and I knew it was a goner (at least it was a delicious goner). Accepting my frosting defeat, I decided to simply have small pools of red and white frosting on top of my cupcakes. Not what I was originally hoping for, but it was all I was going to get!

In the end, my cupcakes didn't look so pretty, but they did taste fantastic! This was actually my first time having red velvet cake and I was surprised at their fluffiness! My guests enjoyed both fillings, and said they looked "great!" (but they might have been saying that more for my pride!)

All in all, it was a fantastic Canada Day. Relaxing outside with friends, enjoying both good food and good company. And I think it provided an excellent opportunity to write my first real post for this blog. I think it highlights perfectly the fact that I'm far from perfect in the kitchen, but I have fun and I'm never going to stop doing what I love.