Best Ever Red Velvet Cake with Red Velvet Cake Frosting

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Cindy

I wanted to make special cupcakes for my granddaughter’s Emma’s birthday, last week, so the search was on, for a new recipe. When the title , “Best Ever Red Velvet Cake” caught my eye, I decided that this was the one! I will have to say, that I made 24 of the best red velvet cupcakes ever. I can’t wait to make a layer cake next time. Instead, of cream cheese frosting, I used a recipe called the, Red Velvet Cake Frosting. This frosting was not only fluffy and delicious but made the red velvet cupcakes look gorgeous,also.

Author: Divas Can Cook – Monique

Ingredients

2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt
2 Tablespoon of unsweetened, cocoa powder
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
2 teaspoon of vanilla
1-2 oz. red food coloring
1 teaspoon of white distilled vinegar
1/2 cup of prepared plain hot coffee (don’t skip this ingredient)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 325.
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, cocoa powder and salt. Set aside.
In a large bowl, combine the sugar and vegetable oil.
Mix in the eggs, buttermilk, vanilla and red food coloring until combined.
Stir in the coffee and white vinegar.
Combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients a little at time, mixing after each addition, just until combined.
Generously grease and flour two round cake pans with crisco and flour.
Pour the batter evenly into each pan.
Bake in the middle rack for 30-40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Do not over bake as cake will continue to cook as it cools.
Let cool on a cooling rack until the pan are warm to the touch.
Slide a knife or offset spatula around the inside of the pans to loosen the cake from the pan.
Remove the cakes from the pan and let them cool.
Frost with cream cheese frosting when the cakes have cooled completely. (or frosting of your choice).

THE RED VELVET CAKE FROSTING

1 c. granulated sugar (I use pure Cane sugar)
1 tsp. vanilla
3 tbsp. flour
1 c. butter
1 c. vitamin D whole milk (don’t substitute)

Instructions: Cook flour and milk ion low temperature, stirring constantly. Cool. Cream sugar, butter and vanilla until as fluffy as possible. Beat cooked mixture with creamed ingredients until fluffy.

I doubled this recipe to frost 24 cupcakes.

This icing must stay refrigerated, will fall apart at room temperature.

Cooking on the Web

Posted on April 14, 2012 by phyllis

Cook Books are Great but don’t forget these food websites and blogs!

Some of the websites and blog creators have written cookbooks which you can find on the library shelves. In most sites you can create an account where you can save your favorite recipes and create a shopping list. The number of blogs and websites can be overwhelming. During a recent Friday Chat at the Amelia Branch we talked about some of the popular sites. Here are just a few:

All Recipes

Search the website or sign up for a free account where you can save your favorite recipes, create and save shopping lists and get cooking questions answered. You can search this site by dishes, meals, ingredients and lifestyle. Most recipes include a photo with the capability to change the recipe to reflect the number of servings you need. Nutritional information is also included at the bottom of the recipe. All Recipes can also be viewed by video on YouTube.

Many of the big food companies have a website with recipes that can be made with their products.

Steamy Kitchen

The Steamy Kitchen is both a blog and website created by professional recipe developer, Jaden Hair. She specializes in fast, fresh and easy recipes. She is also the author of the Steamy Kitchen: 101 Asian Recipes Simple Enough For Tonight’s Dinner. You can search the site by category, holiday, and ingredient. The instructions are accompanied by large, clear and appealing photos. She also adds other related recipes you might like. For fun I made the Steak with Orange Miso Sauce. My grocery store does not sell the Miso product that was called for so I did a quick google search for a substitute. My google research suggested using 1 teaspoon of soy sauce for each Tablespoon of Miso which worked well. The recipe was simple to make and delicious. With a little foresight and a trip to the Asian store I will make it again.

Orange Miso Steak Recipe

Servings: serves 4 Prep Time: 15 minutes Cook Time: 20 minutes

From The Steamy Kitchen blog

Pan seared steak with a simple pan sauce made with fresh orange juice and miso.

Ingredients:

FOR THE STEAK
2 ribeye steaks, bone-in, 1-inch thick
2 teaspoons cooking oil
1 teaspoon salt

FOR THE SAUCE
¾ cup beef stock
2 tablespoons Miso and Easy (substitute 1 tablespoon red miso paste)
1 tablespoon mirin (Japanese sweet rice wine)
1 teaspoon Asian sesame oil
juice of half an orange

Directions:

1) Let steak rest at room temperature for 15 minutes. Rub both sides of each steak with cooking oil and season with salt.
2) Heat an oven-safe pan (cast iron preferred) over high heat. When very hot, add steaks to the pan and let cook until browned, 3-5 minutes. Flip steaks and cook an additional 3-5 minutes. Transfer to a clean plate.
3) Reduce heat to medium-low then add beef stock, Miso and Easy, mirin and sesame oil, cook 1 minute. Add orange juice then add the steaks back to the pan and cook until desired doneness. Test doneness with a meat thermometer:
135F = rare
145F = medium rare
160F = medium
170F = well-done
4) Serve steak with pan sauce drizzled on top.

Smitten Kitchen

Rated best blog in 2011. Created by freelance writer and serious foodie Deb Perelman who does her cooking in her small New York City Kitchen. She calls her recipes “comfort foods stepped up a bit” Each recipe has step by step instructions with photos. I made the recipe “Buttermilk Roast Chicken”. The directions were easy to follow and the chicken was moist and tender.

Tasty Kitchen

The Tasty Kitchen is a blog and website with a link to The Pioneer Woman who has her own blog and Food Network TV show. The site is relatively free of ads. The recipe photos are clear, up close, and colorful.

If you like to bake check out these blogs:

Annie’s Eats

The creator of this blog is a physician by day and a baker by night. While there are several ads on the right side of the page this site is easy to search by category, or title. There is also a Blog roll which links to other blogs.

Food Librarian

Librarian by day and baker by night the creator of this blog writes about her progress in learning to bake from scratch. Her recipes are a work in progress categorized by type of baked good. If a recipe is not listed a citation to the cookbook or link to the website is listed. A unique feature of this blog is the jello page with everything you want to know about jello with recipes.

What’s a Cook To Do?

Posted on April 7, 2012 by Pat S

Whenever I go to a bookstore or a library, one of the first places I head is to the cookbook section. Plain and simple, I love cookbooks! You would think by the amount of cookbooks I look at that I am a Master Chef, but I’m not. There is still so much that I need to learn before I can claim that title.

While perusing the library’s shelves for the perfect cookbook to blog about, I came across, What’s a Cook To Do? by James Peterson. Mr. Peterson has provided the reader with 484 essential tools, tips, techniques, and tricks to dispel some of the confusions they may have when it comes to being in the kitchen and cooking.

Chinese Tea Eggs

Posted on April 1, 2012 by Pat S

I found a website called www.lifehacker.com that had the prettiest Colored Tea Eggs that would be perfect for Easter. When peeled, the hard-boiled eggs resembled cracked marbled eggs in a variety of vibrant colors. (For a picture of the eggs just click on the website link.)

The websites author states:

“Jayne, the chef behind culinary blog Barefoot Kitchen Witch, decided to mix things up this Easter by combining the tradition of dying Easter eggs with the traditional method of preparing Chinese tea eggs:

I’d seen recipes in a couple of my Asian cookbooks for Chinese Tea Eggs, a typical street snack found in parts of China. Basically what you do is hard-boil your eggs normally, and then, when they’ve cooled enough to handle, roll the eggs around on a hard surface to crack them. You don’t want to crack them too hard – you still want the shell to stay on the egg. But you want to develop a nice overall cracked look.

The old-fashioned way to finish the recipe involves reboiling the eggs in a mixture of salted water infused with soy sauce to give the eggs a dark crackled ceramic appearance. Jayne reboiled them in water colored with gel food coloring. The colors seep through the cracks in the eggshell, leaving behind the colorful veining you see in the picture above. Have a nifty kitchen chemistry trick of your own, Easter-related or otherwise? Sound off in the comments below.”

This will definitely be on my to-do list for Easter!