Green Velvet Cake

Red velvet cake is rich, chocolaty, decadent, and ever-so-slightly tacky:

Just look at all that tasty red food coloring!

Green velvet cake is much the same, only way, way tackier:

Now that's class!

The only difference between red velvet cake and green velvet cake is the food coloring. I decided to "go green" with these cupcakes to celebrate St. Patrick's day. Also, I was almost out of red food coloring. (Trust me: there's nothing worse than pinkish-brown "red" velvet cupcakes. I know this from experience.)

I've been looking for a good red velvet recipe for awhile now. I tried one last summer that turned out dry and dull and underwhelming, just like any old box mix red velvet cake. *shudder*

 Trust me: it looks much, much better than it tastes.

Fortunately, I saw the Throwdown with Bobby Flay episode where Bobby takes on Cake Man Raven in a red velvet cake battle. Cake Man Raven is one of the most famous bakers in New York, and, of course, he trounces Bobby soundly in the episode. Since then, Cake Man has very kindly posted his secret recipe on FoodNetwork.com for my pilfering, and I'm gloriously happy about it.


In case you're (pitiably) unfamiliar with red velvet cake, it's basically a very soft, moist chocolate cake that includes vinegar and buttermilk. Apparently, old-fashioned cocoa powder would turn red when it came in contact with acids like vinegar and buttermilk, which is what originally gave the cake its red color. The vinegar and buttermilk also work with the baking soda to give the cake a light, fluffy texture.

Cake Man's recipe is a little unusual in that it calls for very little cocoa powder (only one teaspoon!) and a ridiculous amount of vegetable oil. CAUTION: Scroll down very quickly if you would like to actually enjoy eating these cupcakes.




The recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups of vegetable oil, which is a lot for any recipe. But because this recipe only makes about 30 cupcakes, each cupcake has about 3/4 tablespoons of oil it. Which is why they're so damn delicious.




Aaaaaaanyway. I tweaked Cake Man's recipe a bit. I wanted my cake to have a very fine crumb, so I substituted 1 1/2 cups of cake flour for some of the all-purpose flour. I also wanted a stronger chocolate flavor, so I replaced 2 teaspoons of flour with 2 teaspoons of cocoa powder for a total of 3 teaspoons of cocoa powder. And, of course, I substituted green, blue, and yellow food coloring for the suggested red.

But despite my modifications, the batter turned out beautifully smooth, sweet, and tangy.

"Double, double toil and trouble; / Fire burn, and cauldron bubble!"

The cupcakes took about fifteen minutes to bake. They came out of the oven so deliciously soft and damp that I was glad I had made cupcakes; I don't know how anyone could tort such a cake--I imagine it would just fall apart with the effort!

Tender little green cakes, hot from the oven.

Unlike other red velvet cake recipes I've tried, this one had a very distinct flavor. The cupcakes didn't taste like chocolate, necessarily. Instead, they tasted like vanilla with a touch of fresh cream. But to say that these taste "like vanilla" is like saying that Michelangelo's David is a marble statue or that Sherron Collins is a basketball player: the content is correct, but the scope is utterly lacking. The flavor of these cupcakes is astonishingly complex, despite its prosaic components; the vanilla, chocolate, and buttermilk all play off each other to create a new flavor altogether. And trust me, it's a very good flavor.

I made a cream cheese frosting for these using Nigella Lawson's cream cheese frosting recipe, which is nothing but cream cheese, powdered sugar, and a squirt of lime juice for added tartness. The frosting was delicious as always, but not quite right for this cake.

A cupcake topped with gooey cream cheese frosting.

Next time I make these, I'll pair them with a light, puffy, tooth-achingly sweet buttercream to contrast with the rich pungency of the cake. And I'll make a double batch of both recipes to spread the cake joy farther and longer. I have a feeling that I could eat these cupcakes for weeks, if given the opportunity.

From now on, this will definitely be my go-to red velvet cake recipe, and it's good enough that I would love to make it for birthdays and celebrations, too. So be very, very nice to me, and you might just get a velvet cake in your favorite color on your birthday!

The Lazy Delight of Burnt Butter Cupcakes

Usually, when I feel like baking, I don't have the slightest problem hopping in my car and buzzing off to the nearest grocery store. But last week, I was tired and it was cold outside and I didn't want to spend any money and, gosh darnit, I was feeling whiny and there was nothing in the world that would set me right but an easy, no-hassle, delicious cupcake.

Luckily, Nigella Lawson came to my rescue with her Burnt Butter Cupcakes from How to Be a Domestic Goddess. Every ingredient in the recipe was already lurking somewhere in my fridge or pantry, so I didn't have to do anything but hike up my sweatpants and bake. I call that a pajama WIN!

The completed Burnt Butter Cupcakes

These sound pretty strange--how often, really, do recipes call for purposefully burning something? But I was intrigued because of an article I read in Vogue last summer. Jeffrey Steingarten, Vogue's regular food critic, wrote an article about the wonders of brown butter and how, if done properly, it can add a rich, nutty, smokey flavor to almost any savory or sweet dish. 

So what does burnt butter taste like, exactly?

Toffee. That's it. I'll admit that I was surprised by this when I first sampled the batter, but then I had a total *duh* moment: what else is toffee but burnt butter and sugar? Of course these would taste like vanilla toffee!

The very first step of the recipe, burning the butter, was its most nerve-wracking part. Burning butter just doesn't seem like a wise thing to do. What if I burn my butter beyond repair?, I worried. What if my burnt butter tastes terrible because, well, it's burnt, even if Nigella's tastes mind-bendingly good?

But the process was actually quite simple, and it was easy to tell when the butter was properly burnt. (I couldn't take a picture of this, however, since the butter was too foamy to tell that its oil was turning brown!)

The unsalted butter melting over medium heat.

The butter bubbling and foaming mid-way through its burning.

The finished burnt butter, with the sediment strained out on a piece of cheesecloth.

As always, Lawson's recipe was very easy to follow. My only hiccup was that, even after thirty minutes of sitting out/in the fridge, my burnt butter would not solidify like it was supposed to. So I just threw it in my batter as a liquid, and it didn't seem to do any harm. In fact, it possibly improved the airiness of the cupcakes' texture!

The mixed batter.

The recipe produced very few cakes (only eleven very tall cups), and they baked very quickly, so the most time-consuming part of this recipe was prepping the butter. The cakes turned out to have a fine, tender crumb and to be light golden in color. They reminded me of cornbread, only sweeter and without that unpleasant density and dryness common to most cornbreads.

The high domes on the baked cakes.

 

If you look closely, you can see the fine crumb.

The frosting was the only thing I didn't like about this recipe. It was far too sweet for me, and a little heavy, to boot. After the light, sweet, mellow burnt buttery-ness of the cupcakes, I didn't enjoy how sweet the frosting was or how strongly it tasted of burnt butter (you burn even more butter for the frosting recipe!). It was kind of like eating caramel frosting --ack!!! *cough, hack, pitooey*--only grainier. I would have much rather topped these with a puffy whipped cream frosting or some mild cream cheese frosting.

The super-sweet, super-smoky frosting.

However, others disagreed with me. My mom liked the frosting as-is, but thought it was very rich, and Charlie downright loved the frosting. I think my dad was fond of it, too.

Aren't these purdy?

At the end of the night, happily stuffed with buttery, toffee-flavored, crumbly-rich goodness, I would definitely recommend these burnt butter treats to anyone. These were easy-to-make, but they possessed a certain sophisticated je ne sais quoi after a lifetime of boring old white cake recipes. So go ahead: burn it, baby!