An update of one of our very firsts posts!

Growing up I often asked for a Red Velvet cake for my birthday. One year I remember Mom making a version with peppermint icing, with a recipe I think came from Southern Living. I decided to try something like that, but in miniature form, adapting the recipe Mom always used for red velvet cake, which I think came from my grandmother. I entered these cupcakes in the “Biochemistry Bake-Off” at work a couple years ago, when we first started this blog.  It’s become one of the most popular posts on the site, especially this time of year, but the photos were long past due for a remake — we’ve come a long way since then — and my birthday yesterday was the perfect excuse to make myself cupcakes.

My favorite part of Red Velvet cake is the cream cheese frosting, so I stuck with that for this festive version, but flavored it with peppermint.  I garnished some with a bit of peppermint bark (yes, I know I need to update that post as well…), and some of them I frosted with a candy cane swirl. To get the swirl effect, dye some of the frosting red with food coloring (it will take a lot!) and carefully fill one side of a pastry bag with the red frosting and the other side with white. Then, when you pipe it out of a star tip, you get a striped swirl.

You might also like:

• Red Velvet Cake Truffles
• Mocha Peppermint Bark Cookies
• Peppermint Bark
• Nutty Fingers

Peppermint Red Velvet Cupcakes
Makes 2 dozen cupcakes, or use the same recipe for a 3 layer cake.
Note that I never seem to get a nice domed top out of these cupcakes, but once you frost them it’s not a big deal, and the cake still tastes delicious.

For the cake:

1 c butter (softened)
2 c sugar
2 eggs (room temperature)
1 T cocoa
1 T vinegar
2 1/2 c cake flour
1/2 t salt
1/2 t baking soda
1 c buttermilk
1 t vanilla
1 oz red food coloring

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat until fluffy.

Add cocoa to vinegar, and add to creamed mixture.

Sift remaining dry ingredients and gradually add to batter. Add buttermilk, vanilla, and food coloring.

Bake in cupcake wrappers (makes 2 dozen) or bake in three greased and floured 9″ round cake pans, at 350 F for 25 minutes.

Let cool completely before icing.

Peppermint Cream Cheese Frosting:

3/4 package of cream cheese (6 oz) (softened)
1/2 cup butter (softened)
1 1-lb. box of powdered sugar
1 t peppermint extract

Beat cream cheese and butter. Gradually add sugar, beating until smooth. Add extract and beat until blended.

I found out recently that David Lebovitz has an iPhone app that has different/additional recipes that the ones on his blog. I told my mom about it, too, and she started making these chocolate chip scones from one of his recipes. I’ve recently been making these cranberry scones from Smitten Kitchen, and they are delicious (and for Thanksgiving breakfast I made her apple cheddar scones, which are great, too). But one morning recently I found myself both egg-less and scone-less. So I decided to try a batch of these chocolate chip scones, which don’t require any eggs. The original recipe calls for a bit of cinnamon and orange zest, but I had neither, so I added some ground ginger instead. Having eaten the original version when my mom made them, I can advocate for either flavoring combination. I also added some cocoa nibs since I had some on hand. They add a nice crunch, but are certainly optional.

You might also like:

• Rhubarb Meyer Lemon Scones

Chocolate Chip Cherry Scones

1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup cake flour
1/4 cup sugar (I used vanilla sugar since I had some on hand)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
8 Tablespoons butter, cut into chunks
2/3 cup dried cherries
1/3 cup chocolate chips
1/4 cup cocoa nibs (optional)
1/2 cup buttermilk

For topping:
1/4 cup coarse sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Preheat oven to 375 F. Whisk together dry ingredients (flour through ginger). Cut in butter until it’s the consistency of coarse meal. Stir in cherries, chocolate chips, and nibs, if using. Stir in buttermilk until sticky dough barely comes together; do not overwork.

Press into a circle about 1″ thick. Cut into 8 wedges. Combine coarse sugar and ground ginger. Press each wedge into the sugar topping before placing, sugar side up, on a parchment lined cookie sheet. Bake at 375 F for 15-20 minutes, until lightly golden.

I like them best warm, but Matt thought they were better later in the day. So either way you serve them should be good, as long as you make these scones!

I think this was probably Matt’s favorite of all the recipes we tested for Jess’s cookbook. And if you know how much Matt likes brownies, maybe that shouldn’t be surprising. On the other hand, what you may not know is that Matt loves brownies made from a box mix, but generally doesn’t really like brownies made from scratch. Invariably, they are too cakey, too chocolatey, too gooey, too something, and if he wants a treat, he’d rather you pull out the Betty Crocker box (or he’ll do it himself and hopefully learn from his mistakes and not forget to add one of the eggs and the water again … yes that’s right, Matt added only one egg and the oil to a box of brownie mix one time … not pretty). But these brownies from Julie Badger even Matt enjoyed, so I think they’re a keeper. I think the key may have been the secret ingredient spoonful of peanut butter. They really don’t come out tasting very peanut buttery, but I think it does just add that extra something.

Julie Badger’s Brownies

3 oz. unsweetened chocolate
1 1/2 c. sugar
3 eggs
3/4 cup flour
1/4 teaspoons salt
6 Tablespoons butter or margarine
1 ½ teaspoon vanilla
Large spoonful of creamy peanut butter (1/3 to 1/2 cup)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat 9” square cake pan with Pam.

Melt chocolate and butter over low heat. Stir in sugar, eggs, flour, salt, and vanilla. Add peanut butter if desired.

Spread in pan and bake 30 – 40 min. until dry on top and almost firm to touch. Do not overbake.

The cupcake craze is still in full swing in Palo Alto, where we can choose from Sprinkle’s or Kara’s Cupcakes (which originated in San Francisco).  I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the quality of the cake from Sprinkle’s on the couple of time I’ve tasted them.  I finally decided to try out Kara’s a couple weekends ago — after hiking up Half Dome the day before, I felt like I could afford a little treat.  While picking a cupcake may sometimes be a difficult decision, this time it was easy.  Fleur de Sel cupcake — “chocolate cupcake with caramel filling, ganache frosting and fleur de sel.”  Killer combination!  And while it was indeed a wonderful melding of flavors, with the sweet caramel, the rich chocolate, and the salt to cut through it all, the cake itself was disappointingly dry.  Honestly, I felt like I could do better.  So, the next weekend, if I do say so myself, I did.

I made the devil’s food cake recipe my grandmother used to use, adding a bit of extra chocolate, and topped it with a very dark chocolatey buttercream adapted from Mark Bittman.  I based the caramel on a recipe from — you guessed it! — Smitten Kitchen.  This was definitely the best caramel I have ever made in terms of cooking it the right amount of time (a feat I’m sure I will never repeat), but it was a bit runny for the filling, so I need to work on that.  Despite being a bit messy from the runny caramel, the flavor of these cupcakes was a hit, and I’m sure I’ll be making them again.

And finally, a word of warning. If you have extra chocolate frosting and caramel filling at the end, by no means should you alternate dipping a (clean) finger in each one and licking it off until you run out of fingers. If you start doing that, you may never stop. Not that I would know.

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For this month’s Daring Baker’s post, the theme was cheesecake, and we could modify the basic recipe as much as we wanted.  Oh, the freedom!  I wanted to make something special for Easter, after having given up sweets for Lent, and I found this brownie mosaic cheesecake from Smitten Kitchen — regular cheesecake with chunks of brownies mixed in, and a chocolate graham cracker crust.  I planned to use the base recipe from Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake, chosen by Jenny Bakes, our host this month, but mix in some matcha green tea powder, which I’ve been wanting to try, and chunks of brownies as in Deb’s version.  I ended up using a base recipe more like Deb’s — when I got ready to make the cheesecake, I realized I’d forgotten to buy heavy cream, but if you want to try Abbey’s cheesecake, you can get that version from Jenny’s site.

Matcha is a very finely ground ground green tea used in the Japanese tea ceremony.  Lately, it’s been popular in baked goods for its vibrant green color.  As it turns out though, it’s incredibly expensive (if anyone knows a cheaper place to buy matcha online, please let us know in the comments!).  Instead, I ended up buying Double Green Matcha Tea from the Republic of Tea.  It’s in individual tea bags and is a combination of matcha tea and regular green tea.  I then ground it up more finely in our coffee grinder, but I still couldn’t get it as fine as real matcha, which I think is why the final cheesecake has visible flecks of tea in it and is only slightly green.  The tea only subtly flavors the cheesecake, but I think the bitter note helps to cut the richness of the cheesecake, and I really liked the addition.  For the brownies, I just used a mix, since they were only a small part of the final product, I didn’t think it was worth making them from scratch.

And finally, thanks of course to Jenny for hosting, and be sure to visit the blogroll on the new Daring Bakers’ site, to see what everyone else whipped up!

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

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