lip-smacking good: red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

Red Velvet Cupcakes in some adorable silicone footed cups given to me by a coworker

Red Velvet Cake is one of my favorite desserts.  I realize its just chocolate cake with red food dye, but there's a quality about it, a je ne c'est quoi feel to red velvet that sets it apart from chocolate cake.  It could be, too, that the cream cheese frosting helps a bit.

A while ago, I decided to try my hand at red velvet cake from scratch, and also made my own cream cheese frosting (a 3rd generation, no fail frosting recipe that will have people talking for weeks).  I've also made this frosting when baking sugar cookies and carrot cake.

I used this recipe from Martha Stewart to make the red velvet cake, and ended up making regular and bite-sized cupcakes.

Mini Red Velvet Cupcakes

Then, to make the frosting:

1 stick butter (softened)
1 8 oz pkg cream cheese (softened)
1 lb powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 C coconut (optional.  makes it harder to dye the icing, and some people are not huge fans of coconut.  the frosting is delicious either way)
 

Mix together well with mixer. For extra frosting to cake ratio, do one and a half this frosting recipe and you'll have plenty for the cake and some leftover (for spreading on graham crackers, regular crackers, sugar cookies, fruit, cardboard, or eating by the spoonful).  I decided to color some of the frosting using some neon pink food coloring I got from the grocery store.  Happy baking!

superbowl party snacks

my rice krispie helmet cake

In preparation for tomorrow's Super Bowl, I have been busy in the kitchen.  This is what has come out:

football cake pops

chocolate football lollipops

devil's food cake balls with white chocolate swirls

more devil's food cake balls

Making more tomorrow, mostly in the way of appetizers.  Go Giants!

inquiring minds want to know: cake edition

photo via

I have long been puzzled by the phrase, " you can't have your cake and eat it, too."  While I knew what people were getting at when they used this phrase, it didn't make much logical sense to me.  If I'm going to be able to eat the cake, I will have to have it first.  And if I can't have the cake, how could I possibly eat it.

I finally broke down and investigated the origin of this phrase.

According to the sources that be at Wikipedia, the phrase actually indicates the impossibility of
consuming a thing while also managing to conserve it. The phrase may also be used to point out the flaw in wanting to have two irreconcilable things or having two incompatible feelings.   Phrases with similar meanings include, "you can't have the best of both worlds" and "you can't have it both ways." 

Wikipedia also has this to say about the origin and history of the phrase:

"The phrase's earliest recording is from 1546 as "wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?" (John Heywood's "A Dialogue Containing the Number in Effect of All the Proverbs in the English Tongue").^[1] This phrase alludes to the impossibility of eating your cake and still having it afterwards. The modern version (where the clauses are reversed) is a corruption which was first signaled in 1812. Further misconception has been perpetuated in main-stream media by Douglas Pace during his argument that it is in fact the order of the eating and having which matters, similar to the chicken and the egg conundrum."

Also, if you are wondering how to make (and eat) the delicious cake above, you can find the recipe here.