Red Velvet...Anything!

Hi Everyone!!
I hope you're all doing well. I'm doing great. I have a wonderful assignment I'm excited to talk about, but without pictures yet. So I'll just show you some Red Velvet pictures to go with the post :) A post with no pictures is no fun at all!!

So a girlie I know called me and asked if i can bake her some healthy cookies with low calories. So I came up with some ideas, found some recipes from my trusted books, and this weekend I am hitting the kitchen. I have 5 recipes I want to try, but I'm not sure I will bake them all. I mean...I will get stuck with dozens and dozens of cookies. I was thinking of maybe baking 2 of them, see how she likes them, and then try another 2, and then keep the 5th one for later? I guess we'll see :)
But don't you love this whole expiremental thing? I feel so much better if I'm doing it for a customer rather than just baking in the kitchen to try new things on my own (with my fiance as a test subject, who eats everything anyway!)

But anyways, who likes Red Velvet?? I remember the first time I ever say a Red Velvet recipe I was amazed. I mean...a RED CAKE?? I did give it a try.. it seems like forever ago. I wasn't selling my baked goods back then, I was only doing it for special occations. That's when people started telling me that what I baked was too yummy to go to waste.

This is my 25th Birthday Cake. The inside is a Red Velvet, and the frosting is a Marshmallow frosting I found online. Let me tell ya! Even though people loved it, I found that I had over baked the cake so it was a bit on the dry side, and the Marshmallow Frosting wasn't the greatest match. But i had some cousins visiting from England, and they tried this and LOVED IT! They even told me they found a bakery they go to just for this cake. Btw...the flowers are real. I didn't know where I could find sugarpaste to make sugar ones...speaking of, that's a whole different story, but the first thing I ever did in my life that has to do with confectionary, was the sugar paste roses! I must've been 5 or 6 years old.
What do you think? Not too shabby eih? It was the very first time EVER I had frosted anything!

2 Years after the above picture, I decided I wanted to give it a try to go a bit more pro on this whole baking thing. I made a pricelist, added some of my best recipes on there, downloaded a software that helps you price cakes, and started giving out my menus. I had a tasting event (paired with a birthday party) and my 2nd order was a Red Velvet Cake. Remember this one? That was a whole lot of chaos!

Then I baked one for my neighbor, of which a have a picture of what the inside looks like (but during the cutting of the cake, the picture wasn't all that great) Here it is.

And then, I baked some more Red Velvet Cakes :) But it doesn't stop there. We have all heart of Red Velvet Cupcakes (or most of us). I baked some of those, too. One time, I didn't have enough color, so they seemed like they stayed out in the sun and faded out.. I don't think I have a picture for that (like I'd post it!) Then some other time, I baked them...and I photographed them as if they were models on a catwalk!!

Don't they look pretty? I think they do :). And even though you see it's a Red Velvet on the Cupcake Liner, I had to cut it up so you can reeeeally see the inside.

You know what happened next, right? Well I couldn't take it to the customer like this! So I just had to eat it! (I actually only had 1/4 of it, my fiance the other 1/4 and we took the half to my brother-and-sister-in-law to-be (that's a long word!) so they can try it. Well the rest were for the order I had so I couldn't take them a whole one. It's ok, they understand :)

BUT, the most versatile Red Velvet anything I ever baked was...Red Velvet (drum roll please....) BROWNIES!!! I KNOW, RIGHT? So moist with Cream Cheese Frosting on top.. yumm!!! I baked these for my Valentine's Bake Sale, but I hadn't taken a picture before I put them out on the table. My aunt remembered these and ordered them for a meeting she was having, so I took the chance to photograph them. They are how you see them: moist on the inside, crispy on top, covered with Cream Cheese Frosting. AND, they are Brownies! So there's melted chocolate inside there!

This is it you guys. Many pretty pictures for you to look at until next time :)

Don't forget to like Fairy Cakes on Facebook, too.

Have a great day :!) -xoxo-

Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes

Hello everyone!
I woke up this morning and I couldn't wait to tell you about my news!

It's been a while since I last posted any yummy cupcakes, so I decided I will share my NEW flavor with you. I have baked this before, but the thing is I was afraid to put it on the menu. Then a new customer calls, who found me through my Facebook Page, and asked for 3 flavors of Cupcakes, but nothing with chocolate...hm...no problem but most of my Cupcakes have some kind of chocolate something in them..!! Thinking to be done: Vanilla Cupcakes? Sure, a classic, we can put those in. Then no Chocolate Cupcakes, but how about Nutella Cupcakes? Well the cupcake is Chocolate with Nutella filling so again, no. How about Banana Cupcakes?? But I make them with a Chocolate Frosting so ...NO! I did the Red Velvet ones for her because you can barely tell there's cocoa in there. We should have a voting...the cocoa is only there for the color, right? I should do a blog post discussing Red Velvet! Then the other option was Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Frosting but the customer did mention these were going to children in school so not a lot of children care for lemon-anything. So that's out.

You know what comes next...right? I had to put the missing flavor into play. I thought, who doesn't like crumbled cookies? ON TOP of their Frosting? Young ones or old ones? If I could, I'd smash the Cupcake into the Digestive Cookies (I'd use Graham Crackers if I lived in America but *sniff* we don't have those), only if it wasn't for destroying that beautiful swirl of the Frosting. I loooooove crust anything, so you know I love the idea of this Cupcake.

Am I keeping you in suspence? You want to see the picture, right? Ok ok here's the picture, we'll chat more below it.

See the strawberries at the bottom? And the crumbs on top? Ooooh Heaven!!! (...ok just don't tell my nutritionist I had one of these.. I will find a different excuse for not loosing all the weight I was supposed to...like an alien forced me to eat it or something?)

I did 2 Cupcake deliveries right after I finished assembling these...and then went on to a BBQ and took some with me to see what people think. I am getting to the part where I didn't clean the kitchen afterwards and now it's bugging me. So off I go to work, and then straight to the kitchen cleaning..and living room cleaning (that's where the picture taking took place).

Oh oh and one more thing...I had some time on my hands yesterday so I took some really nice pictures of the Cupcakes I baked for my new customer. I will be sharing soon because I am REALLY escited with the result! You'd think a professional photographer took the pictures. Can't wait to share :)

Are you Fasting?

Easter is right around the corner, and many people are fasting in preparation for this holiday. And the Greek Orthodox way of fasting is a little stricter than the one my friends used to do when I lived in Los Angeles: they picked 1 thing and stopped doing it for the 40 days of lent.
For example, if they thought they ate too much chocolate during the year, they would completely stop eating anything chocolate for 40 days (Don't panic, this is an example...I do not know anyone who gave up chocolate!).

Are you ready for the Greek Orthodox way? You go VEGAN for 40 days!!! Now if you are vegetarian or vegan, you don't mind, but if you love meat, and CHOCOLATE and all those great sweets that use milk and butter...then WHAT?? (P.S. for those of you that don't know what vegan is..-I recently found out myself. I only knew vegetarian- vegans are those who choose NOT to eat any meat products or products that come from animals such as milk, butter, eggs, etc. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). But don't panic! More and more people are becoming vegan nowadays, so the ideas are starting to flood the internet.

So going back to where many people are fasting...since Easter is around the corner? Ok there. Many are asking for vegan sweets. And the 2 things I have suggested before were my Pecan Bars that I can turn into a Pecan Tart, and the Crumb-Topped Apple Pie. Simple modification: Instead of butter for the crust, you use shortening. But these are what people are ALREADY having for the fasting, so they want something else, something different. So I stumbled upon a Chocolate Cupcake Recipe in one of my books, that looked a little like this:

These Bad Boys?? ALL VEGAN!! Even the frosting! There's some basic things that change in a vegan recipe. Instead of butter, you use oil/shortening, instead of milk, you use soy milk or almond milk (depending of the flavor you want to give your cupcakes, too). And of course milk chocolate changes for dark chocolate, since the latter doesn't contain milk.

The frosting came out bright white since it had no butter. I used shortening and soy milk along with powdered sugar and a bit of vanilla.

I made these for my mum's birthday. She wanted to treat everyone at work, so I made mini cupcakes for her. She said people were fighting over them. I'm glad to hear that. My fiance ate about 8 of the regular size cupcakes of these. I guess it's a success!

Yogurt Frosting? YES!

I had a very easy going Sunday this past weekend and thought I should bake something for the house. I currently don't have many chocolate options on my menu, so I wanted to experiment with chocolate so I can widen the repertoire.

So I baked a classic 2 layer chocolate cake. Fine so far. Then, I needed the frosting that was going to make it a WOW chocolate cake! There's many options out there for a twist on the classic chocolate frosting. There's Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting..there's the Chocolate Butter Frosting..even Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting. You can add nuts in the frosting or coconut...or fruit. But let's go back for a minute: if there's Sour Cream Frosting, can't there be a YOGURT frosting??? Greek yogurt is strained nowadays and has a very creamy texture. Why not??

Let's give it a try:

First, I melted the chocolate with the butter. Let it cool a little.
Then I added the yogurt.
Put it in the mixer with some icing sugar.

It came out thick enough to frost a cake without adding to much confectioner's sugar. I don't like too much of that in my frosting.. it makes it too sweet.

Frosted the first layer.

And finally frosted the whole cake. It was very good tasting. Not too sweet like most frostings. I am very pleased with my creation. This will be a new addition to my menu: Chocolate Cake with Chocolate-Yogurt Frosting!