So the more I think about my cupcake addiction (which I totally don't have!), I was thinking that I think the thing I like most about cupcakes is the artictic, decorating aspect. I mean eating cupcakes is always amazing, but I think more than having cupcakes just to eat them, I like creating miniature works of edible art.
Exhibit A: Joe's valentine's day present (well, part of it):
Exhibit B: Close up of the red velvet cupcake pretending to be a ladybug:
Exhibit C: The rest of the cupcake tower. The ladybugs are red velvet, the non-ladybugs are french vanilla:
This is the red velvet cake recipe I used. It is amazing. I got from the What's Cooking board on the Nest:
Red Velvet Cake
1/2 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
2 cups cake flour
2 Tbsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 ounce red food coloring
1 tsp baking soda
1 Tbsp white vinegar
1) Preheat the over to 350 F and line your cupcake tins with paper
2) Cream shortening and sugar then beat in eggs one at a time
3) Sift flour, cocoa and salt together in a small bowl. Add dry ingredients to shortening mix a little at a time alternating with the buttermilk and food coloring
4) Dissolve baking soda into vinegar and fold into the batter.
5) Fill cupcake tins a little more than 1/2 full and bake for 22 minutes, checking for doneness with a toothpick.
6) After removing from oven, alow cakes to cool in the pan for 5 mintues then tranfer to a cooling rack.
7) Once cool, decorate to your creative little heart's content.
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
2 cups cake flour
2 Tbsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 ounce red food coloring
1 tsp baking soda
1 Tbsp white vinegar
1) Preheat the over to 350 F and line your cupcake tins with paper
2) Cream shortening and sugar then beat in eggs one at a time
3) Sift flour, cocoa and salt together in a small bowl. Add dry ingredients to shortening mix a little at a time alternating with the buttermilk and food coloring
4) Dissolve baking soda into vinegar and fold into the batter.
5) Fill cupcake tins a little more than 1/2 full and bake for 22 minutes, checking for doneness with a toothpick.
6) After removing from oven, alow cakes to cool in the pan for 5 mintues then tranfer to a cooling rack.
7) Once cool, decorate to your creative little heart's content.
Yummy. Those are really, really cute.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid, however, that you are indeed an addict.
OMG! Those look scrumptious and adorable. lol I love red velvet cake, guess I'll have to steal this recipe too. :)
ReplyDeleteCarissa you are not fooling anyone. You know the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. You just took a step back in the recovery process. Although, I do enjoy looking at your creations.
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness those are adorable! I'm sincerely impressed by your excellent frosting skills! Am I awful for wanting to see the red insides as well?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if this is directly related but I did want to mention, casually, that
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to note that when hoi polloi was used by writers who had actually been educated in Greek, it was invariably preceded by "the". Perhaps writers such as Dryden and Byron understood that English and Greek are two different languages, and that, whatever its literal meaning in Greek, hoi does not mean "the" in English. There is, in fact, no such independent word as hoi in English — there is only the term hoi polloi, which functions not as two words but as one, the sense of which is basically "commoners" or "rabble." In idiomatic English, it is no more redundant to say "the hoi polloi" than it is to say "the rabble," and most writers who use the term continue to precede it with *the* ...[12]
I like Wikipedia.
No hard feelings,
j.
ROFL.
ReplyDeleteThat's fine. I was just being a snobby, publishing punk. I've actually seen it used both ways but do find it amusing when they put 'the' in front of hoi.
I hope I didn't cause you too much grief.
-C