Thursday 7 July 2011

Red velvet and Improv cheesecake

♥ Red Velvet Cupcakes ♥

A day or so ago I decided I was going to finally try my hand at baking Red Velvet Cupcakes. I had heard so much of these exotic little treats and I was dying to try them myself (without paying through the nose at a craft fair!)

So. Armed with my lovely present from my boyfriend ("Everything Alice" by Hannah Read-Baldrey and Christine Leech) I hit up Tesco to buy the correct ingredients. Normally I would just wing it but this time I was going to get it perfect!

Yesterday I set to, mixing and beating and creaming and all manner of professional baking activities, all the while barely being able to contain my excitement about the end result. (I'm being deadly serious here.)

Whilst these mini lovelies baked for half an hour I decided now was a good time to create the cream cheese frosting (another first for me!) However, this was when disaster stuck! Cream cheese frosting is supposed to be lovely and thick and pipe-able. Mine was runny and not pipe-able. I tried...

Despite it not being the correct consistency, it tasted y-u-m-m-y, so on it went. So what if my cupcakes looked different to the glorious example in the book?

As a final flourish I sprinkled pretty chocolate stars on top. The dark chocolate made for an attractive contrast to the red and cream.

The end result:
did they taste good? Well, there are none left, so I guess so!




♥ Improv Cheesecake ♥

The disaster frosting would not have been such a disaster had there not been quite so much of it. I had no idea what to do! I was loathe to throw it away as in my family we always make use of everything we have (vintage lifestyle choice or what?)

I was agonising to my mum about my excess of cream cheese frosting when she came up with the smart idea of making mini cheesecakes. So a few crushed digestives, chopped strawberries and mint sprigs later, I had three perfect miniature cheesecakes! They were delicious ♥




In other non-baked-goods-related news, I saw Green Lantern today (directed by Martin Campbell) and I think I fell in love! Hal is now my new favourite super hero. The main theme of courage and fear really struck home for me, and it made a nice change that his lady-love knew who he was. Plus the fights were damn cool.

Tomorrow I'm going to tackle another cute make from the Everything Alice book; lavender doormice! C-U-T-E!

Have a great day tomorrow!

♥ Rachel ♥

3 comments:

  1. No red velvet cupcakes for me? :(
    Also the runny frosting looks better than conventional huge turd shaped mountain they put on cupcakes today. The cupcakes tend to get lost in the desperately sweet fluff on top. Bring back the cupcake I say!
    The cheesecakes were a brilliant idea too, go Mum :P

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  2. Soon! I'll buy more red food colouring and things could soon get messy again...

    I do love those fluffy turds of frosting though...

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  3. Don't sacrifice the cake for the turds though!

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