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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 the food col­or­ing then 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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We so loved yesterday’s batch of Upside-down Caramel Apple Cup­cakes that I decided to make some more but this time right way up. I had a dozen plain spice cup­cakes left over to use.

This time around I peeled and chopped 2 large Pink Lady apples which are excel­lent for cook­ing with. They held their shape won­der­fully and didn’t break down when stirred into the caramel even once they were tender.

Caramel Sauce

10 oz unsalted but­ter
2/3 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 tea­spoon of nut­meg
1 table­spoon of cin­na­mon
pinch salt

Melt the but­ter over medium heat in a pan. Add the sug­ars and spices. I cooked this reduc­ing the heat a lit­tle until it bub­bled and didn’t look so watery on top. To test my caramel I place a tea­spoon full of the sauce on a glass plate and pop it in the freezer for a few min­utes to see how it’s set­ting up. You don’t want a hard tof­fee like caramel in your cup­cakes. When you get a nice soft but not runny con­sis­tency add the chopped apples and con­tinue to cook until the apples are ten­der… I wasn’t adding them to the oven this time since I was using cup­cakes I had made pre­vi­ously, so I needed to cook them a lit­tle longer.

Cut a small cap from the top of the cup­cakes by diag­o­nally insert­ing a sharp knife into the cup­cakes  from the edge towards the cen­ter about one inch.  Cut around until a small cap pops out.  You can see the shape of the well in the image below.  I trim off the point on these caps so they sit flat when I put them back on top of the caramel apple filling.

Add a heaped tea­spoon of the caramel apple fill­ing to the cup­cakes.  Replace the trimmed caps and sprin­kle with pow­dered sugar.  I think these looks so fes­tive and use col­ored cup­cake papers to suit the sea­son.  Great for those Fall par­ties, Thanks­giv­ing and other Hol­i­day festivities.

As always, if you have any ques­tions be sure and drop me a line.  I love hear­ing from you all and will do my best to answer in a clear man­ner…  Often I think my instruc­tions are clear but then again…

Cheers for now,

Colleen

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Ok, I know that bak­ing is a sci­ence but this takes the cake!!!

The Peri­odic Table of Cup­cakes is ter­rific fun. (Link opens in a new window)