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.

Okay, I know, it isn’t really famous (yet), but it is well-known and well-loved in my family at least. This may be simple, but it imparts a phenomenally delicious crust to red meat. I literally look forward to it all year. Dad started making it several years ago to rub on the standing rib roast we always have on Christmas Eve, but it’s also great on steak or lamb.

Ingredients:

2 cloves garlic, minced (or more or less, depending how much meat you have)
Fresh rosemary, finely chopped
Very coarsely ground black pepper
Sea salt

Start by mincing the garlic. Use equal parts of rosemary and pepper as garlic, and add slightly less than an equal part of sea salt. Mix all this together and rub on the meat. Wrap it loosely and refrigerate until ready to cook. The longer it stays on the meat the better. Mom and Dad say they usually leave it on the meat for at least a couple of hours.

I know, it’s the new year, and everyone’s got all kinds of resolutions to exercise and eat healthier, and the last thing you need is more pictures of delicious sweet things. So, I promise this is the last of the Christmas sweets. This is a traditional yeast bread/cake often made by Moravians, usually at Christmas time, but sometimes other times of the year as well. My mom grew up in the Moravian Church, but doesn’t remember making sugar cake herself until I was little and she made it for the Candle Tea (a kind of church bazaar at Christmastime) at Raleigh Moravian Church in North Carolina. She got the recipe there from Mae Marshall.

You make a dough with yeast, let it rise and spread it into pans. Then comes the tastiest and most fun part — you punch holes in the dough and sprinkle it with brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter, then bake it. I think it’s far better served warm so the sugar is gooey, and it can be reheated in the oven, wrapped in foil to keep it moist, or with a very quick stint in the microwave. Don’t overheat it or it will get tough and dried out.

We don’t make this every year as it’s pretty labor intensive, but when we do it makes a bunch and so it makes great gifts. When we do make sugar cake, we save one for ourselves to eat on Christmas morning while we dig into our gifts.

Ingredients:

1 c mashed potatoes (from scratch or instant, see below)*
3/4 c butter or shortening
2 slightly beaten eggs
2 t salt
1 c hot potato water or hot water
7/8 c granulated sugar
2 pkg dry yeast**
4-5 c all purpose or bread flour
Cinnamon
Brown sugar
Butter

Mix potatoes, butter, and sugar, reserving a couple teaspoons. This should be very warm to help the yeast become active.

Proof the yeast: mix 1 c hot water with the yeast and reserved sugar. Stir, and wait for the yeast to bubble a bit to make sure it’s active.

Mix salt and flour in a large mixing bowl. Using a dough hook, mix in the yeast water, potato mixture, and beaten eggs. Dough should be pretty thick and resemble heavy muffin batter. (Add more flour if needed.)

Cover, let rise in a warm place until double. (We use the oven with the light on, and usually put some boiled water in a cup to make it nice and moist for the yeast.) It takes about 1 hour to rise.

Punch down once. Spread dough into 4-5 8″ greased layer pans or one large greased jelly roll pan. Let rise in a warm place again, again for about an hour.

When the dough has risen again, preheat the oven to 375 F (removing the pans first if thats where you let them rise!). Once the pans are well filled, you’re ready to punch. Dip your thumb in flour and punch holes in the cakes. Make lots of holes, close together and all the way to the edge. The more holes you make, the more bits of bubbly buttery brown sugar you’ll have!

Sprinkle the punched dough with cinnamon. Crumble light brown sugar across the cake. Melt butter and drizzle over all. Sorry I don’t really have amounts here; we always just eyeball it. Hopefully the pictures will give you some idea.

Bake at 375 F for 20 minutes. If you’re using multiple pans and need to bake on two racks, switch the pans top and bottom halfway through so they’ll brown evenly. They are done when the top is nice and golden and the bottoms are starting to brown a little as well.

If you make it in a jelly roll pan, you can cut it into several smaller cakes to give as gifts. The sugar cake also freezes well.

*Mashed potatoes:

If you cook a real potato, you’ll need 1 large to make 1 c mashed potatoes. Cook the potato in enough water that you’ll have a cup of it to use for the hot potato water. DO NOT add salt to the cooking water.

Alternatively, use instant potatoes/potato flakes. Use enough to make 1 c mashed potatoes, using half water and half milk for the liquid. Again, don’t add salt. In this case, you won’t have potato water and will have to just use hot water.

**When doubling the recipe, you don’t need to double the yeast.