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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.

Dutch-Process Cocoa or Alka­lized Unsweet­ened Cocoa Pow­der: Has been treated with an alkali to neu­tral­ize its nat­ural acid­ity. Because it’s neu­tral and doesn’t react with bak­ing soda, it must be used in recipes call­ing for bak­ing pow­der, unless there are other acidic ingre­di­ents in suf­fi­cient quan­ti­ties used. It has a reddish-brown color, mild fla­vor, and is easy to dis­solve in liquids.

Hershey’s Dutch Processed Cocoa

Ghi­rardelli Cocoa

Unsweet­ened Cocoa: Has a com­plex choco­late fla­vor while the Dutch-process is darker and more mel­low. Its intense fla­vor makes it well suited for use in brown­ies, cook­ies and some choco­late cakes. When nat­ural cocoa (an acid) is used in recipes call­ing for bak­ing soda (an alkali), it cre­ates a leav­en­ing action that causes the bat­ter to rise when placed in the oven.

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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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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So, of course I ended up with red food col­or­ing up one arm and on the kitchen rug.  Still not sure how that hap­pened!  These cakes are very light and fluffy due to the sifted cake flour. I topped and filled mine with my favourite crust­ing cream cheese but­ter­cream and some dec­o­ra­tor sugar and top­pings I had on hand. I love the color with this recipe. I have made them in the past where they weren’t red enough but it helps to use the dutch processed cocoa pow­der because it’s darker than reg­u­lar cocoa.

Don’t for­get to try this recipe out mak­ing the Red Vel­vet & Cream Cheese Cake Balls, they’re deli­cious! Ok, so now I’m off to make a cuppa and maybe sneak one of these! ~ Colleen Just in case I get busy in the next day or so!

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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

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Once peo­ple find out you make cakes, look out! I recently made this cake for a friend’s daugh­ter who was turn­ing 17. She wanted a red vel­vet cake and her favourite colour is turquoise. Those were the sum of the instruc­tions I got. I have daugh­ters so it was pretty easy to come up with a design I thought she’d like. Firstly, I had to research just what was this red vel­vet cake which has lately become a bit of a National obses­sion and just what flavour is RED? After scour­ing books and ask­ing ques­tions it became appar­ent that red vel­vet cake and cream cheese icing are quite often a pop­u­lar and suc­cess­ful pair­ing. But I wanted the look of fon­dant and the taste of cream cheese. As luck would have it I found this fab­u­lous recipe for “Crust­ing Cream Cheese But­ter­cream” on the RecipeZaar web­site cour­tesy of one of their mem­bers. THANKS!

Recipe — Crust­ing Cream Cheese Buttercream

SERVES 1 , 4–5 cups (change serv­ings and units)

Ingre­di­ents :

1 cup but­ter, soft­ened
1/2 cup veg­etable short­en­ing
1 lb cream cheese, soft­ened
1 table­spoon clear vanilla extract
3 1/2 lbs sifted con­fec­tion­ers’ sugar
1/2 tea­spoon salt

Direc­tions:

1.   Cream but­ter, short­en­ing, cream cheese and extracts. Grad­u­ally add confectioner’s sugar and salt. Beat on low speed until nice and creamy. If you want whiter icing, try to use but­ter with­out dyes avail­able at most health food stores.

2.   This recipe is for a stiff con­sis­tency. For a thin­ner con­sis­tency, use 3 pounds of pow­dered sugar instead.

3.   If you want a very smooth cake, let the cake sit for 15 min­utes after icing (longer for a thin­ner icing). Then using your spat­ula or fon­dant smooth­ing tool (this works best)and smooth it with a plain, non-patterned Viva paper towel. To do this, take your paper towel and lay it on your icing (after it crusts) and lightly rub over the paper towel with your hand, spat­ula or fon­dant smooth­ing tool to get a smooth sur­face. If the icing sticks to the paper towel, you didn’t let it “crust” long enough. Stick it in the fridge for 20 min­utes or so to let it “crust” then try again. If you let it dry too long it will get harder to achieve the smooth look.

4.   This recipe will ice, fill and dec­o­rate an 8″ dou­ble layer cake with icing left over.

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When a but­ter­cream is called “crust­ing” it means that it dries out and hard­ens enough to be smoothed with a paper towel and/or your smooth­ing tool. It doesn’t get as hard as royal icing but hard enough to han­dle. If your room is warm or the icing starts to get sticky you can pop the cake back in the refrig­er­a­tor or freezer for a few min­utes until it firms up again. If you like the look of fon­dant but not the taste this can be smoothed to achieve the same visual appeal. I made the first red vel­vet cake but it just wasn’t “red” enough. It looked more like choco­late cake that had a red tint to it. So I remade both the 12x12 and the 6x6 cakes again and this time they were RED! They also turned out to be very moist and tasty. I made some gumpaste from a Nicholas Lodge recipe and then pro­ceeded to make var­i­ous sized stars to which I inserted wires and painted with edi­ble sil­ver and edi­ble turquoise glit­ter. Then I coloured some gumpaste to a turquoise shade, made a plaque for her name and a few more stars for good mea­sure. I sprin­kled the top of the cake with a lit­tle more glit­ter and called it done. My friend Susan was so happy with the cake I made for her daugh­ter she cried. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MORGAN! Things I learned from this cake adven­ture… RED vel­vet cake gets on EVERYTHING and leaves a stain — be warned! Stick wired objects into the cake AFTER you drive across town to deliver it — they wob­ble a LOT! Happy bak­ing! ~ Colleen