CLAUD

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Red Velvet Cupcakes!

Yesterday morning I headed down for my piano make up lesson. Realised that I got my dates mixed up and didn't inform my teacher that I was coming - but strangely convinced myself that I did. In any case, I turned up at her door with her greeting me in pyjamas with a earphone headset on because she was talking to her sister in America.

Makes things kinda awkward if not for the fact that she said, "Eh? Today got lesson? You said you were going to call right?"

*twiddle thumbs*

So yes, lucky she was kind enough to let me have lesson since she's free at the moment.

Afterwards, I headed down to Toa Payoh to get cocoa powder because she can't find it at the NTUC near her house. I thought maybe Toa Payoh central might stand a better chance.

No. I was dead wrong. That whole stupid place's "Baking Section" didn't have many important things. Like you know unsweetened cocoa power (Herseys Brand), chocolate chips. They seemed to be "anti-chocolate" and 'instant baking powder mix' people.

It offends my "baking from scratch" soul.

So ended walking the whole of Toa Payoh central to find alternative groceries stall like shop and save or something, can't find. Did manage to find that I have a high tolerance to hot weather thought. I gave up and decided to head back to NTUC and searched high and low for the cocoa powder only to find it in the "Milo, Tea, Horlicks" section. Seriously, they should re-look into their classification system.

It was almost 1pm when I reached Cat's house and we started on the baking immediately. =D While cat sifted the flour, prepared the dry mixes, I was preparing the 'wet' mixes and was finally glad to be using an electric mixer. The sound and the repetitive motion of creaming and mixing just destresses me….suddenly had a vision of having my own cupcake shop.

Cat was checking the recipe when we were at the stage of adding the food dye when she said we needed 2 bottles of the food dye when we only had one. Firstly, I had issues putting so much food dye because it's very unhealthy and the darker the food dye, the more bitter it's going to get. Ended up with 1 tablespoon into the entire mixture. Initially the cupcakes were getting their colour, but as it caramelises, it lost its redness on the top. So we decided to make red icing instead.

We realised that the food dye wasn't really red, it was more like a cranberry pink, as you can see in the picture below. Explains our lack of red-ness. Our Red Velvet cupcakes = brown velvet cupcakes.

The icing recipe was horrible! It required so much sugar that it began to make her domestic help and her mum worried. 6 cups of icing sugar. It's a recipe for people who want to get diabetes is it?!

Geez….It turned out pretty bad because the icing was just too watery to make any significant 'peaks' that you normally see. However, the cupcakes taste good, not too sweet and if not for the lack of good cocoa powder, we should have gotten a very nice cocoa taste as well *mumbles stupid NTUC mumbles*.

So….here are the pictures!

Below, you can see why the red velvet cupcake is called 'red'. It's supposed to be even redder than this, but sadly, adding too much food dye was really not a comfortable thought. In any case, the cupcake was velvety enough to satisfy our palette.

Hopefully next time it'll be better! Will be using beetroot juice to get the redness. Was flirting with the idea of getting strawberry icing too!

More cupcakes next time!

14:45