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Red vel­vet, while syn­ony­mous with Valen­tines Day and now pop­u­lar for wed­dings, is just plain gor­geous to look at.  To be totally hon­est, red is my absolute favourite colour and any chance I get to wear it, look at it or eat it I do.  Not that many red foods around when you think about it… and I don’t really eat very much red meat.

Sooo let’s get busy and make some deli­cious red vel­vet cook­ies to be enjoyed and shared all year around.  But wait, just think how cute they would be for Christ­mas or Valentine’s Day as well!

This recipe calls for Dutch Processed Choco­late.   So what’s the dif­fer­ence between that and reg­u­lar unsweet­ened cocoa pow­der you ask?   First off, Both types of cocoa pow­der are unsweet­ened and there­fore bit­ter when tasted alone.

Ok, on to our recipe:

Ingre­di­ents:

3 1/4 cups (355 grams) all pur­pose flour
1/4 cup (75 grams) unsweet­ened Dutch processed cocoa pow­der
1/2 tea­spoon salt
1 tea­spoon (4 grams) bak­ing pow­der
1 cup (227 grams) unsalted but­ter, room tem­per­a­ture
1 3/4 cups (350 grams) gran­u­lated white sugar
2 large eggs
2 tea­spoons pure vanilla extract
3 Table­spoons of Red Food Col­or­ing.. I used the gel type

For Red Vel­vet Cookies:

1. In a large bowl whisk together the flour, cocoa pow­der, salt, and bak­ing powder.

2. In the bowl of your elec­tric mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the but­ter and sugar until light and fluffy (about 3 to 4 min­utes). Add the eggs, one at a time, beat­ing well after each addi­tion. Add the vanilla extract and beat until combined.

Add the flour mix­ture and beat until you have a smooth dough.

3. Divide the dough in half and wrap each half in plas­tic wrap. Refrig­er­ate for about one hour or until firm enough toroll.

4. Pre­heat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and place rack in the cen­ter of the oven. Line two bak­ing sheets with parch­ment paper.

5.    Remove one half of the chilled dough from the refrig­er­a­tor and, on a lightly floured sur­face, roll out the dough to a thick­ness of 1/4 inch (1 cm). (Keep turn­ing the dough as you roll, mak­ing sure the dough does not stick to the counter.) Cut out desired

shapes using a lightly floured cookie cut­ter and trans­fer cook­iesto the pre­pared bak­ing sheet. Place the bak­ing sheets with the unbaked cook­ies in the refrig­er­a­tor for 10 to 15 min­utes to chill the dough which pre­vents the cook­ies from spread­ing and los­ing their shape while baking.

Note: If you are not going to frost the baked cook­ies, you may want to sprin­kle the unbaked cook­ies with crys­tal or sparkling sugar.

Bake cook­ies for about 10 — 12 min­utes (depend­ing on size) or until they are firm around the edges. Remove from oven and let cook­ies cool on bak­ing sheet for a few min­utes before trans­fer­ring to a wire rack to fin­ish cool­ing. Frost with royal icing, if desired. Be sure that the frost­ing on the cook­ies dries com­pletely before stor­ing. (This may take sev­eral hours.) Frosted cook­ies will keep sev­eral days in an airtight

con­tainer. Store between lay­ers of parch­ment paper or wax paper.

Makes about 36 — 4 inch (10 cm) cookies.

BEST frosted with a cream cheese frost­ing.  I use the recipe on my site here and thin it with some milk to make it more like a glaze if I don’t want heavy frost­ing.  Also, I have rolled out fon­dant into the same shape as the cookie and placed it on top of a thin layer of the frost­ing which gives a nice finish!

For a final fin­ish on my fon­dant cov­ered cook­ies I used an impres­sion mat to make pretty pat­terns.. and then dusted with pearl dust.. there is no limit to what you can do with these or any other cook­ies!  Happy Baking!

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Here’s a thought that crossed my spoiled mind this evening. What if, say, like my fam­ily in Aus­tralia, I can’t just run to the store and grab a box of red vel­vet cake mix off the shelf. I’ve obvi­ously for­got­ten that it wasn’t that many years ago that I didn’t even know what a red vel­vet cake was! Imag­ine that.

This week I received an email from a fel­low cake maker who asked me to share my favourite red vel­vet cake recipe since she wasn’t able to buy a box mix. Fel­low bak­ers give me mixed reac­tions when I openly admit to using (insert scary music here).… red vel­vet cake out of a box!! Well, I do and I’m not afraid to say it. Why not? It’s bad enough get­ting cov­ered in red cake mix, which I usu­ally do, with­out hav­ing to mess with red food colour­ing when mea­sur­ing it out for a “from scratch” recipe.

Actu­ally, there is a lit­tle his­tory to my dread of red…  I used to own a small bak­ery in Aus­tralia and had left some dec­o­rat­ing items out on the din­ing table in my brand new din­ing room, in my brand new home.  To cut a long story short, my youngest daugh­ter was a climber and the result was red food colour­ing all over her and the brand new car­pet!  We bleached it out and then had to dye the car­pet back lov­ingly with teabags.  So you might now under­stand my dis­like of red food colour­ing, even if red is my favourite color!

Ok, back to the cake at hand.  I tend to look at box cake mixes as a start­ing point, and usu­ally tweak them by chang­ing out the oil with apple sauce for instance, and adding my own flavour­ings, add-ins etc. I’m sure the good peo­ple at Dun­can Hines, Betty Crocker and Pills­bury didn’t just whip them together in five min­utes. It is my under­stand­ing that they have spent years per­fect­ing their mixes for our con­ve­nience. And very often that is the time I have no com­punc­tion in reach­ing for one.

Sure there is noth­ing quite like a del­i­cately cre­ated sponge or genoise but there are times when I just need to get out two dozen cup­cakes in a hurry and trust me, 5 year olds very rarely call me out on using a box cake mix over a scratch baked cake. Their beam­ing lit­tle faces cov­ered in frost­ing are all the proof I need that some­times, it’s ok.

So let’s get this red vel­vet cake made!

Ingre­di­ents:

• 1/4 cup dutch processed (dark) cocoa powder
• 2 table­spoons red gel food coloring
• 1/4 cup hot water
• 6 table­spoons unsalted but­ter ( softened)
• 2 table­spoons veg­etable shortening
• 1 2/3 cups sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 tea­spoon pure vanilla extract
• 2  1/2 cups cake flour
• 1 tea­spoon salt
• 1 table­spoon apple cider vinegar
• 1 tea­spoon bak­ing soda

Method:

Pre­heat oven to 325°. Line muf­fin pan with paper liners.

Whisk together cocoa pow­der, food col­or­ing, and hot water. Set aside to cool.

In the bowl of your elec­tric mixer fit­ted with a pad­dle attach­ment, cream but­ter and short­en­ing until smooth. Scrape down bowl and add sugar. Beat until mix­ture is light and fluffy, about 5 min­utes. Add eggs, one at a time, beat­ing well after each addition.

Stir but­ter­milk and vanilla into the cooled cocoa mix­ture. Sift cake flour and salt together into another bowl. With the mixer on low, alter­nate adding the flour mix­ture (in 3 parts) and the cocoa mix­ture (in 2 parts) to the egg mix­ture. Beat until incor­po­rated.  Com­bine vine­gar and bak­ing soda and stir until bak­ing soda dis­solves; the mix­ture will fizz. Add to bat­ter and stir until just combined.

Fill cup­cake pans 2/3 full with bat­ter. Bake 20 to 25 min­utes, or until a tooth­pick inserted in the cen­ter comes out clean. Remove from oven, trans­fer to a wire rack, and let cool for 10 min­utes. Remove cup­cakes from pan, and let cool completely.

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I’ve always wanted to try mak­ing cake balls.  The whole idea just looks like fun.  I’ve seen them on other sites and thought I would def­i­nitely have to give them a go some day.

Well hubby got pro­moted recently so why not use that as an excuse to make some for him to take into the office right?  Easy as can be.

The recipe below uses a boxed cake mix but if you can’t get your hands on one or would just pre­fer to make it your red vel­vet cake from scratch here is the recipe.

Red Vel­vet & Cream Cheese Cake Balls

Ingre­di­ents: 1 box red vel­vet cake mix (I used Dun­can Hines — cook as directed on box for 13 X 9 cake) 1 1/2 cups of my cream cheese frost­ing or you can use the can cream cheese frost­ing (16 oz.) 1 pack­age choco­late bark (reg­u­lar or white chocolate) Parch­ment or wax paper.

Red Vel­vet & Cream Cheese Cake Balls

Method:

1. After cake is cooked and cooled com­pletely, crum­ble into large bowl.
2. Mix thor­oughly with the cream cheese frost­ing.  I used a wooden spoon to mix it around.
3. Using a melon baller or tea­spoon roll mix­ture into quar­ter size balls and lay on cookie sheet cov­ered with parch­ment.   You can also use a mini ice-cream scoop but I’m a hands on kinda gal.
4. Chill for sev­eral hours. I froze mine for two hours.
5. Melt choco­late in microwave per direc­tions on pack­age.
6. Roll balls in choco­late and lay on parch­ment until firm.  (I dropped the balls into the choco­late, com­pletely cov­ered them and then scooped them up with a fork and tapped on the side of the bowl until most of the excess choco­late came off.)

I also only melt a few pieces of choco­late bark at a time because it starts to cool and thicken. It’s eas­ier to work with when it’s hot.

I refrig­er­ated mine again until ready to pack up and send to the office.

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I love bak­ing for oth­ers so of course Valentine’s Day pro­vides ample oppor­tu­nity.  I’m get­ting an early start by mak­ing these deli­cious red vel­vet cup­cakes for my friends.  Hubby has three to take to work for the guys and I will take the rest with me.

These lit­tle beau­ties have a hid­den gooey cream cheese frost­ing cen­ter and are also topped with more and then rolled in sparkly red sugar just for fun.

I had to try this recipe out.  It’s not mine it’s from my friend over at Art of Dessert who has per­fected it!

Red Vel­vet Cake
1 1/2 cups but­ter, soft­ened to room tem­per­a­ture
2 1/4 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups vanilla yogurt
1 ounce red food col­or­ing (liq­uid or gel)
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 1/4 cups flour
3 Tbs. cocoa pow­der
2 tsp. bak­ing pow­der
1 1/2 tsp. bak­ing soda
3/4 tsp. salt

Pre­heat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two 8-inch or 9-inch cake pans or line three muf­fin pans with cup­cake liners.

In a large mix­ing bowl, cream but­ter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Com­bine yogurt, red food col­or­ing and vanilla extract in a small bowl. Sift together flour, cocoa pow­der, bak­ing pow­der, bak­ing soda and salt in another bowl. Alter­nate adding the yogurt mix­ture and flour mix­ture into the large bowl. Pour bat­ter into pre­pared pans or lined muf­fin pans. Bake for 30–35 min­utes (15–20 min­utes for cup­cakes) or until a tooth­pick inserted in the cen­ter of the cake comes out clean. Cool completely.

Cream Cheese Frosting

With the mixer on a low speed, beat the cream cheese and but­ter till blended. Mix in vanilla and lemon extracts. Slowly add the pow­dered sugar, a cup at a time. Once all the pow­dered sugar is added, increase to a higher speed to whip up the frost­ing till light and fluffy.

Recipe by Art of Dessert