Love and Colour with Creative Cookie

Mari Williams resides in Dana bay in the Western Cape.

Happily married and mother of two boys.

She started baking and creating just for the love of it

and soon neighbors and friends started ordering her

beautiful and very tasty creations!

This month she is sharing her YUM red velvet recipe with us!

Stay connected by liking her Page on Facebook; Creative Cookie

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Creative-Cookie/150356128464048

Va-Va Velvet!

Red Velvet is one of those cakes that you either love or hate. Originally, Red Velvet Cake got its red colour from the juice of boiled beets, yuck! Personally, I don’t much care for the taste of the beetroot in the cake, so I use red food colouring. But that is my personal opinion; they say that the beetroot juice adds to the moistness of the cake. Just for fun, I have also made Green velvet and Blue velvet. I am seriously considering doing orange next….

I made some cuppies for an order recently and thought to share my recipe with you.

Ingredients:

1 ½ Cup Sugar 1½ Tbs Red Food Colour

½ Cup Butter 1 tsp Vanilla Essence

2 Eggs 1 tsp Vinegar

2 1/3 Cups Flour Icing:

2 Tbs Cocoa 1 Cup Butter

1 tsp Bicarb 120 g Cream Cheese

1 tsp Baking Powder 2-3 Cups Icing Sugar

½ tsp Salt 1 tsp Vanilla Essence

1 Cup Buttermilk 1 tsp Lemon Juice

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Beat butter & sugar. Add eggs one at a time. Sift flour, cocoa, baking powder, bicarb & salt. In another bowl whisk buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla & food colour. Starting with dry, add the dry and wet ingredients to the sugar and butter mix alternating between the two and mixing well after each addition.

Fill your cupcake papers ½ way with dough. Bake in the oven for 22 minutes approximately. Leave to cool in cupcake tin for 10 min (it seals in the yummy moistness)

Icing: Cream together the butter, vanilla and lemon juice in a bowl. Once the butter is creamy, start adding the icing sugar one cup at a time until you have desire sweetness. Then add the cream cheese and mix until incorporated. Do not over mix. Once cupcakes are completely cooled……ICE ICE BABY!!

Hints and tips:

· If you use the tulip cupcake papers like I did, the halfway mark needs to be measured from the top of the cup and not the top of the tulip……those tulip cups are gorgeous, but if you overfill, they tend to come out deformed…oval to be exact. Not ideal ;-)

· Most recipes cream the butter and cream cheese together for the icing and then add the rest…..but I add the cream cheese at the end, if you over mix the cream cheese it becomes watery and there is no turning back from there.

· I made the cupcake toppers using some fondant I coloured and using cookie cutters, cut out some shapes and used stencils, knife, flitter etc. to make patterns and give sparkle. The stars are mounted on thin wire that I soaked in boiled water to “sterilize” them.