Wednesday 9 October 2013

Red velvet cup cakes with oreo and coconut butter cream frosting

There's a crase for sugar craft , more specifically  fondant icing and it's being going on for quite some time . Sugar artists have sculpted and built awesome things with fondant. You talk to a bride-to-be and she's day dreaming about her 12 tier cake covered in all white fondant with white fondant angels ascending and descending the cake and so on and so forth. So what about those of us who love beautiful cakes but haven't been beaten by the fondant bug and are taking precautionary measures to make sure we don't get beaten. I'm sort of a sugar artist myself but I'll pick a cake covered in tasty butter cream frosting or chocolate ganache over a fondant covered cake any day. What about cupcakes with frosting? aren't they the cutest little things? Some times I make some really cute cupcakes and I can't bring myself to eat them cause I just want to stare at them all day. So here's a little something for my bug free food lovers.

Prep tims: 45 minutes

Bake time: 25 minutes

Servings: 16 cupcakes

Difficulty: Easy

INGREDIENTS

1) Flour (150g)

2) Butter (100g)

3) Sugar (130g)

4) Eggs (2 large)

5) Baking Soda ( 1/4 teaspoon)

6) Baking powder (1/4 teaspoon)

7) Vanilla ( 1 teaspoon)

8) Salt ( 1/4 teaspoon)

9) Milk (1/4 cup)

10)   Cream (1/2 cup)

11) Ground Nutmeg (1/4 teaspoon)

12) Red food colouring ( 1 tablespoon)

13) Cocoa powder ( 1 tablespoon)

FOR FROSTING

1) Butter

2) Icing sugar

3) Vanilla ( 1 teaspoon)

4) Hot water  (1 tablesploon)

5) Oreos chocolate cookies

6) Dessicated coconut

7) Cherries

PREPARATION

Pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees

1) Cream the butter and sugar on high speed, using a stand mixer or a hand mixer, until it's light and fluffy.

2) Mix the dry ingrdients and sieve. ( Ravineux Tip: I sieve the dry ingredients at least three times. This helps to incorporate air into it and the cakes turn out  light, soft and succulent.  Desert cakes should not be dense or else it might as well be a pound cake)

3) Whisk the eggs in a bowl till you get a light yellow colour. Add vanilla, milk amd cream and whisk some more so they all mix properly.

4) Now add red food colouring, vanilla and nutmeg to the butter amd mix. Afterwards, add the flour  mix and egg mix to the butter in alternations starting with the flour mix and ending with it. ( Ravineux tip: When mixing the flour and egg with the butter , use a wooden spoon and mix in folding motion rather than stir I.e instead of going round and round like you do when stiring anything, go up and down and make sure not to over mix cause the more you mix the more gluten forms. I won't bore you guys with science jagon but just know that too much gluten leads to a hard cake. Small gluten perfect cake, too much gluten hard cake, lots and lots of gluten and you have yourself a baked rock)

5) Line the muffin tin with cupcake liners. Fill each cup half way with the batter. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes or till a tooth pick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. Make sure not to leave the cake too long in the oven or else the cake comes out looking more like a chocolate cake rather than red velvet.

PREPARATION FOR FROSTING

1) Cream the butter on high speed. When it's light, gradually add the  sugar and mix. Add a tablespoon of hot water, this helps to soften the butter even further.

2) Add vanilla and mix. Share the mixture into two separate bowls. Crush the oreos and mix one part of the butter with oreos. When the cupcakes are cool, using a piping set, pipe  round swirling pattern over the cake or whatever pattern you desire. Pipe the oreo butter cream frosting over half the cupcakes and the plain butter cream frosting over the second half  then generously sprinkle the dessicated coconut over them. Top each cupcake with a cherry and there you have it, your cute little red velvet cupcakes. Enjoy!!

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