The best frosting I’ve made so far.

I am not a big frosting or icing person. If you have read through this blog before, you’ll notice that most of my cakes go without it, because I think that it takes away from the flavour of the cake. Frostings are just too sweet for me, but when it comes to making sugar cookies for Christmas, I have to use it!

The trouble I’ve found is that most buttercream frostings I’ve made are too soft. I can never get them stiff enough without adding lots and lots of icing sugar, thus making them too sweet and inedible. Also, I like my white frosting to be white, not this off-white, buttery yellow colour that doesn’t take food colouring very well.

Happily, I came across a recipe in a gingerbread house kit that I bought. It’s terribly simple and super easy to make, and I will use it from now on whenever I need to make frosting.

The Recipe

1 egg white

A box of icing sugar

Method

1. Whip the egg white until soft peaks form.

2. Add icing sugar, a little bit at a time, until desired consistency is reached. The icing will harden when left to dry, and will also get shiny.

3. That’s it!

My Alterations

When I first used this recipe to make icing for our gingerbread house adventure, I made it very thick. Probably a bit too thick, because it started hardening while still inside the piping bags! Oops. I learned my lesson, though, because when I made it for my Christmas sugar cookies, I made it much softer and it was easier to spread. The icing still hardened as it dried, but it took a lot longer.

The Result

This icing is very easy to make and use. I added lots of different colours to it for my kids to decorate their cookies, and it worked very well. Even though the icing was watered down a bit because of the colouring, it still dried after a few hours so I could wrap them up.

The Verdict

This recipe will be a staple in my baking arsenal. It’s easy to remember, too, which is such a bonus. I like the sort of recipes where you can adjust them to your needs so easily.

The Rating

5/5, definitely. See how pretty my cookies looked?

Day 17: Red Velvet Cake

Apparently, Paula Deen is trying to kill us. I thought I’d risk trying her recipe anyway, because I was intrigued by the idea of a red cake, and I’m also still a little bit sad about missing out on my green cake. Getting emotional over the colour of my cakes isn’t weird, right? Right??

The Recipe

Cake:
2 cups sugar
1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter, at room temperature
2 eggs
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 ounces red food coloring
2 1/2 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon vinegar

Icing:
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese
1 stick butter, softened
1 cup melted marshmallows
1 (1-pound) box confectioners’ sugar
1 cup shredded coconut
1 cup chopped pecans

Cake:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a mixing bowl, cream the sugar and butter, beat until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and mix well after each addition. Mix cocoa and food coloring together and then add to sugar mixture; mix well. Sift together flour and salt. Add flour mixture to the creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk. Blend in vanilla. In a small bowl, combine baking soda and vinegar and add to mixture. Pour batter into 3 (8-inch) round greased and floured pans. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from heat and cool completely before frosting.

Icing:
Blend cream cheese and butter together in a mixing bowl. Add marshmallows and sugar and blend. Fold in coconut and nuts. Spread between layers and on top and sides of cooled cake.

My Alterations

I ended up only having 1.5 ounces of food colouring, but otherwise the recipe was fairly easy to follow and stick to. Oh, I didn’t have normal vinegar, just malted vinegar, but that wasn’t a problem.

The Results

Well, firstly, the cake is RED. I mean, really, really RED. Even with the smaller amount of food colouring, crumbs on the counter looked like the aftermath of some sort of cake war:

This cake was messier to make than most, because I needed like 500 different little bowls to prepare ingredients before mixing them all together. I didn’t mind mixing the baking soda and vinegar together, though, because they fizzed in a very science experiment-y sort of way. Cool.

Premixing the cocoa powder with the food colouring just made it more difficult to mix the cocoa powder into the batter, in my experience. The cocoa powder just got all clumpy and I was having to find all the lumps and mash them up to mix them into the batter better. (I just love baking related alliteration)

The batter is definitely enough for 3 cakes, and they took a bit longer to bake than I expected. Keep an eye on them, because you don’t want to overcook the cakes and lose their red colour by turning too brown.

The Verdict

This cake has a wonderful texture; I understand why it’s called a Red Velvet Cake after seeing it for myself. It has a slight chocolate flavour (duh), but I had trouble with tasting the food colouring in it. If I had used less, I think I would have been happier with the flavour.

Even so, this cake is just as a cake should be: moist, fluffy, and addictive. It can easily stand alone without the frosting, and I personally wouldn’t want to hide its colour underneath that mountainous layer of frosting that the recipe calls for. These would be great as cupcakes at a kid’s party or something. So eye catching!

The Rating

4/5

I like this cake very much, aside from the food colouring after-taste. I’m very happy I finally ended up with a crazy coloured cake, and it was worth the extra bit of effort involved. I would suggest on cutting down on the food colouring (one ounce, maybe) and don’t premix the colouring with the cocoa. Caused more problems than anything else, really.