red-ish velvet-ish cupcakes

The future wife and Asher-the-devil-dog hiking through the autumn landscape

We've decided to have cupcakes in place of a traditional cake for the wedding. Not only cupcakes, but 3 flavors of gluten-free vegan cupcakes. The 3 flavors are, tentatively, red velvet w/ cream cheese icing, chai w/ cinnamon buttercream icing and peanut butter w/ chocolate icing. And the testing began today.

My goal is to figure a way to make the red velvet cakes without the 4000 gallons (or 2-4 ounces...) of red dye 40, which terrifies me and is something I don't feel is appropriate for human consumption. Although there is an amazing amount of debate on the subject, and seemingly on all subjects related to red velvet cake, most sources cite 2 possible natural sources for the red; the natural chemical reaction between the cocoa powder and the acidity of the batter (which has both buttermilk and vinegar traditionally), and some combination of beet products, from shredded beets (raw or cooked), pureed beets, beet juice, pickled beet juice, etc. I like the more subtle forms of red velvet that are basically a white cake with a small amount of cocoa powder, so I didn't trust using just the cocoa powder to get the color, so I made one batch using a small amount of pureed pickled beets along with a syrup made from boiling down the pickled beet juice (which usually contains HFCS, which I didn't know when I bought it...ugh).

The results were, um, disappointingly...not red. Pink isn't really even an adequate description...perhaps "brain colored"? "Salmon"? I don't know, but not red. The flavor, however, is really good, just enough cocoa as to not taste like a chocolate cake but still to taste like something more than vanilla. It probably helps that I used really good expensive cocoa powder...but, alas, the color bumped this variation out of the running.

So, I made another batch...or another 1/2 batch, using a combination of pureed canned beets (not pickled) and beet juice.

The batter was a lovely shade of purply red, and the top of the cupcakes looked lovely.


The inside...still brown, but not so brain-like, so I guess that an improvement. They do, however, taste slightly of beets. Which is not so ideal. And the color still isn't there. But the tops are pretty!

I fear that I may have to compromise my values a bit and use some red dye if I want these things to actually look red. I'll keep trying a bit though. All I have to say is, now that I have about a billion cupcakes, I am so glad I'm visiting family tomorrow and have a church thing on Sunday where we're supposed to bring food...because I am quite sick of odd colored cuppers...

Oh, and we took some "engagement" photos the other day at our venue, since we wanted to see how the foliage would look.

This one came out pretty cute, helped out a lot by the dogs (look at Kasie peeking over Ash's head!). Please ignore the craziness of my socks!

I know, I know, I'm sorry!

Hey there, I'm back from the dead! Well, no, not really, but it has been so very very long since I have posted and even longer since I've made a "real" post, with a recipe and pictures and everything. This summer sort of got away from me, between gardening, work, a new dog and all that. Throw in a dead laptop, missing (for months!) battery charger for the camera, and general distraction and you've got a very bad blogger. But, wait, I now have motivation to post again, a reason to blog because...Katie and I are getting married, legally! Now that Massachusetts did away with their law banning out-of-state couple from marrying there, and New York announced that they will recognize "foreign" same-sex marriages, we've decided to go ahead and make it official next October (1 year and, eek, 4 days from now!). And, because planning a wedding (especially one that involves two actual ceremonies) isn't complicated enough, we are DIYing about 90% of the thing...including food. So, yes, now we need to pick, plan and test a full menu of gluten-free vegan appetizers, entrees and cupcakes to feed 60-70 people, most of whom are not gluten-free or vegan and will need to be won over by the wonderful tastiness of whatever we make. We actually have a semi-planned out menu at this point, but much testing and tweaking needs to be done, and, hopefully, that process will be played out here for the world to see (yay?). Plus, the "food season" is starting, beginning with Katie's birthday on the 25th, and we are hosting Thanksgiving for an as-yet-to-be-determined number of people this year, there will be much food to be blogged about in the coming months.

Anyway, I just wanted to crawl out from under my rock and say...stay tuned for the first wedding cupcake testing coming friday....

Birthday

I have been a bad, bad blogger. Sorry. Hopefully there is anyone out there still reading this occasionally, seeing if I'm still alive or whatever. But anyway, here are some awesome pictures to make up for it...

Last week, Katie cooked up a massive amount of food for a sort-of surprise birthday party for me. Sort of because I knew there was a party and I knew when it was and I knew some of the people coming, but I didn't know about a few really good friends from college who I hadn't seen in ages and I didn't know about a lot of the food.

I, however, knew I was having carrot cake because I had been craving the perfect carrot cake for a long time. The PERFECT carrot cake...it needed to be dense, moist, full of "stuff", spicy, with cream cheese icing and those ubiquitous bright orange piped carrots on top. Two test batches later (without icing), I found it. I had high hopes for the carrot macadamia ginger coconut cake in VWAV, but, as tasty as it is, its just not right...its a lovely spice cake, but its not a carrot cake...just a spice cake with carrots...and the crystalized ginger is very distracting. So I settled on veganizing and de-wheating Sam's Famous Carrot Cake moist but not gummy or heavy, nicely spiced and crunchy-chewy with all the good stuff (walnuts, pineapple, coconut AND carrots!) jammed into this cake. I then made a basic cream cheese icing using earth balance, tofutti cream cheese and organic powdered sugar (just enough to make it sweet but still taste like cheesecake)...add a dash of vanilla and a bunch o recipe from allrecipes.com. 252 4-or-5-star reviews, I figured it was worth it...and omg, yes! I replaced the wheat flour with spelt and a pinch of xanthan gum, Ener-G for the eggs, applesauce for the oil, and almond milk w/ lemon juice for the buttermilk and then added a little ground ginger and a little nutmeg, plus some more carrot as a lot of the reviews recommended. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Dense andf shredded coconut and we had an amazingly tasty icing that quickly negated any health benefits gained by leaving the oil out of the cake, lol! I baked and iced, then was promptly kicked out the kitchen so Katie could decorate. Here are the results:



How professional does that look! My aunt thought the cake was from wegmans and that we were kidding about having baked/decorated it ourselves.

And then Katie whipped out the cupcakes: gluten-free versions of the Mucho Margarita and Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes (a hot version and a not-so-hot version) from VCTOTW. They were both amazing but the icing on the margarita ones was out of this world...everyone was raving about them and I ate far too many.





One issue, what is with the gluten-freedom cupcake recipes and their lack of gluten-replacement? No xanthan gum, no egg replacer, no whipped-up silken tofu...Katie made the first batch and they, no surprise, didn't rise at all and were rubbery-dense. Second batch, added some xanthan gum and they were perfect. We both were kind of disappointed in that shortcoming in an otherwise amazing cookbook.

Unfortunately, we were having too much fun catching up with old friends and eating to take pictures of any more food, but there was a taco/burrito bar with mock-a-mole (guac made with half peas, half avocado), homemade mole sauce, roasted veggies, fresh veggies, vegan salsa-cheese dip, spanish rice, jicama salad, tropical chex mix, various salsas and chips, strawberry and blueberry margaritas...way too much really awesome food (and I think we still have some olives left in the fridge). I'm so happy that everyone came and that Katie managed to put everything together with me only knowing a little bit about it (along with my mom, who helped out in the sneakiness).

I'm gonna try to update this at least every couple weeks....its harder now that the weather is getting nicer and we are working hard to get the yard/garden in shape, there are more chances to hike, and I really don't want to stay inside at the computer any more than necessary, but I will make an effort! Hope everyone is having a happy spring!

banana doughnuts?

note to self; the V-con jelly doughnut cupcake recipe works quite well when one subs out spelt for the AP flour, and chopped up banana for the jelly. Unfortunately, they get snarfed too fast to get a photo. Perhaps I'll just have to make more....