Twas the night before the night before Christmas

Traveling makes me tired. So does going to bed late and then getting up early. Yeah, yeah, I'm a wuss. I'm okay with that.

After getting up early to go and have my hair done, Robert picked me up and we went to get the kids from Mom's house. Then it was off to the grocery store, the assisted living place to drop something off for my grandmother, and then to the Fansler's who are friends of mine from high school.   

My plan was to make red velvet cupcakes using MaryBeth's mixer. I'm a mixer miser. Muaahahaaaa. 

In between lots of talking, a quick tour of the updates they'd made to their house, and watching their son Josh complete an amazing cake he was making for their Christmas celebration, I somehow got the cupcakes made in between munching on homemade Chex mix (so much better than the store bought kind) and losing count of what I was measuring. No matter, the cupcakes turned out amazingly well and it was quite flattering to see kids converge out of nowhere to try them (and also to have improved an opinion or two about red velvet cake). 

After we finished and cleaned up, we just sat around talking and looking through yearbooks. Reading what I wrote in Donovan's yearbooks was both hilarious and embarrassing. Good to see I had a lock on saying a lot without actually saying anything that early. Also? I do not - at all - miss high school. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. But I do miss good friends, just like these...

Dogged

I'm warning you now, this post is going to be about cake.

Okay!

Let's talk red velvet cake. I've been playing around with a recipe for about two weeks now. Since I kind of stink at icing cakes, I tried baking the batter as cupcakes and in a pound cake pan. The pound cake pan was a good idea in theory, but the cake turned out too heavy or something. Cupcakes worked much better - they baked more evenly, somehow had a better flavor, were easier overall to manage. Plus, they were done in 20 minutes.

And Oh. My. Goodness. The cream cheese icing? Turned out beautifully every single time. I may be a lifetime convert.

Batch one: cupcakes. They were excellent except for the fact that I didn't have enough red food coloring and they turned out more of a reddish purple than a deep red. That did not deter us in the least from eating them.

Batch two: make in a pound cake pan. It looked so pretty, but the texture was a bit tough (I think I over beat the batter a bit) and the flavor was a little bland.

Batch three: cupcakes. I got distracted while they were baking, so half of them were a bit too done which seems to make them taste kind of bland. I also tried making blue cream cheese icing since I was going for Super Mario Bros. colors. The icing was way too pale blue (if just as yummy) which made the cupcakes look like sunburned smurfs. I gave most of them away and then (and this will appall my mother) even threw some of them away.

Batch four: cupcakes. Last chance before the party. Friday night at 10 pm I start the process. The wet ingredients looked like some sort of modern art painting.

Somehow I managed to get this batch the right shade of red and the right amount of done. This is what they looked like:

They were pretty doggone good, but I gotta say, I think I'm done with red velvet for a while.

Baking Adventures

I got it in my head to try and make a red velvet cake. I looooooove red velvet cake. Well, I love really good red velvet cake. If it's over cooked  nor not moist enough, it's pretty....blech.

Of course I didn't have some ingredients...like enough red food coloring. Red food coloring, as you can imagine, is a pretty important ingredient of red velvet cake. After a trip to the commissary and then to Walmart (for the things I forgot at the commissary), I had what I needed.

But then I didn't have enough time.

Rats.

Not my red velvet cupcakes, but don't they look  yummy?!

So today I had time and I thought, 'hey! Let's make a cake." I tried to get Sara on board, but she wanted to ride her bike so we did that for about an hour. Which was awesome!

Shortly before the bus picked her up, I started getting all the ingredients together. Guess what I can't find? The two bottles of red food coloring I bought on Saturday. I called R at work to see if he might know where they are. He did not.

Drat. I've already mixed the wet ingredients in one bowl (minus the food coloring) and the dry in another. Like it or not, I'm kind of committed to making some kind of cake.

Interesting fun fact...red velvet cake batter without the red is a kind of purplish/grey. It does not look yummy, no matter how yummy it tastes.

I found a tiny bit of red in the multicolor box I use for mixing icing colors, so I dumped that in. It changed the batter from purplish/grey to red-ish. Better than nothing.

So I toss the batter in cupcake pans and bake away.

Man did they turn out delicious! Now all I have to do is make the cream cheese icing and find someone to give most of them to.

Many thanks to Food Network for the awesome recipe.