Puce Velvet Cake
I can't tell you the number of times that my mother told me to "read the recipe and then lay out all your ingredients BEFORE you start to cook." It makes sense, doesn't it? That way you know if you have everything that you're going to need AND you don't need to flit all over the kitchen trying to dig out the bag of flour or wash the beater attachment after you already have everything in the mixing bowl. Pure common sense.
But me, being me, i prefer the sense of adventure that comes from flying by the seat of your pants. I'm the one who spends weeks researching vacation destinations and activities to do once there but won't pack till the night before. Vacations are so much more interesting when there's a trip to the drugstore inbetween the airport and the hotel to pick up toothbrushes, socks, and a package of Jockey for Her. I'm the one who's attached at the retina to my GPS but, when in LA and desiring to go to the beach, i turn it off and simply drive west. What? There's city city city city OCEAN. It's not exactly hard to find. But i'll purposely turn off Santa Monica Boulevard in an attempt to make the drive a little more interesting.
Anyway, last night i said "I want cake". More importantly, i wanted cake with cream cheese frosting. This limits my options to banana cake, carrot cake, or red velvet cake. Knowing that i didn't have any bananas or carrots in the house the only option, really, was the Red Velvet. I pulled out my trusty baking book, found the recipe, and did a quick perusal; flour, baking soda, eggs, cocoa powder, red food coluring, yadda yadda yadda. No problem. So i started assembling. No gathering of all the ingredients. After i creamed the butter and sugar together and added in the flour and other dry ingredients i looked at the book for the next step. Buttermilk. What? Who has buttermilk in their house? After a bit of searching i found a good substitute for buttermilk online and combined regular milk with a tablespoon of vinegar. Voila, sour milk, appropriate for use in a recipe. Next up, combine the cocoa powder (uh oh, it was supposed to be NON dutch process...oh well) with 2 (!) tablespoons of red food colouring. I emptied the contents of my less than half-full, miniscule bottle of red food colouring into the bowl and mixed in the cocoa powder. I had to supplement it with tap water to make the required paste that was supposed to be vibrantly red but was, sadly, brown with a just the barest hint of red. I'll be honest, it looked more like slightly bloody diarrhea than anything else. Into the mix it went. Ultimately the batter was a sickly brown-ish purple but tasted divine. side note: one of the best things about being the mom is that you can eat as much cake batter as you want and there's no one there to tell you that it contains raw eggs and therefor should not be consumed. I think it might all be a conspiracy of mothers to get all the batter and dough covered spoons for themselves rather than giving them to their children. As a mother, i approve of this conspiracy. My big plan was to make them into cupcakes but when i searched the cupboards for my container of paper cupcake liners i found three. Not three containers, three liners. *sigh* Into two greased loaf pans went the batter. The cake ended up looking pretty much like a regular old chocolate cake, perhaps a hint of red. Let's call it puce. I made a Puce Velvet Cake.
My journey to the frosting was pretty similar to my journey for the cake. The recipe called for, obviously, cream cheese and powdered sugar but then i noticed that it was also calling for sour cream. Just two days before i'd opened the tub of Tillamook sour cream and recoiled at the carpet of green. The Month of No Dairy, remember. So, i pretty much just made up a cream cheese frosting recipe. Unsalted butter, cream cheese, vanilla, and powdered sugar. Turned out delish, if i do say so myself.
The moral of this story? I do not prepare. Or rather i do, kind of, but not in the right way. I think it just goes to show you that sometimes life is way more fun when you throw away the map or vacation without a thought to oral hygiene. Or when you get a basic idea for a recipe and then just make it up anyway.
But me, being me, i prefer the sense of adventure that comes from flying by the seat of your pants. I'm the one who spends weeks researching vacation destinations and activities to do once there but won't pack till the night before. Vacations are so much more interesting when there's a trip to the drugstore inbetween the airport and the hotel to pick up toothbrushes, socks, and a package of Jockey for Her. I'm the one who's attached at the retina to my GPS but, when in LA and desiring to go to the beach, i turn it off and simply drive west. What? There's city city city city OCEAN. It's not exactly hard to find. But i'll purposely turn off Santa Monica Boulevard in an attempt to make the drive a little more interesting.
Anyway, last night i said "I want cake". More importantly, i wanted cake with cream cheese frosting. This limits my options to banana cake, carrot cake, or red velvet cake. Knowing that i didn't have any bananas or carrots in the house the only option, really, was the Red Velvet. I pulled out my trusty baking book, found the recipe, and did a quick perusal; flour, baking soda, eggs, cocoa powder, red food coluring, yadda yadda yadda. No problem. So i started assembling. No gathering of all the ingredients. After i creamed the butter and sugar together and added in the flour and other dry ingredients i looked at the book for the next step. Buttermilk. What? Who has buttermilk in their house? After a bit of searching i found a good substitute for buttermilk online and combined regular milk with a tablespoon of vinegar. Voila, sour milk, appropriate for use in a recipe. Next up, combine the cocoa powder (uh oh, it was supposed to be NON dutch process...oh well) with 2 (!) tablespoons of red food colouring. I emptied the contents of my less than half-full, miniscule bottle of red food colouring into the bowl and mixed in the cocoa powder. I had to supplement it with tap water to make the required paste that was supposed to be vibrantly red but was, sadly, brown with a just the barest hint of red. I'll be honest, it looked more like slightly bloody diarrhea than anything else. Into the mix it went. Ultimately the batter was a sickly brown-ish purple but tasted divine. side note: one of the best things about being the mom is that you can eat as much cake batter as you want and there's no one there to tell you that it contains raw eggs and therefor should not be consumed. I think it might all be a conspiracy of mothers to get all the batter and dough covered spoons for themselves rather than giving them to their children. As a mother, i approve of this conspiracy. My big plan was to make them into cupcakes but when i searched the cupboards for my container of paper cupcake liners i found three. Not three containers, three liners. *sigh* Into two greased loaf pans went the batter. The cake ended up looking pretty much like a regular old chocolate cake, perhaps a hint of red. Let's call it puce. I made a Puce Velvet Cake.
My journey to the frosting was pretty similar to my journey for the cake. The recipe called for, obviously, cream cheese and powdered sugar but then i noticed that it was also calling for sour cream. Just two days before i'd opened the tub of Tillamook sour cream and recoiled at the carpet of green. The Month of No Dairy, remember. So, i pretty much just made up a cream cheese frosting recipe. Unsalted butter, cream cheese, vanilla, and powdered sugar. Turned out delish, if i do say so myself.
The moral of this story? I do not prepare. Or rather i do, kind of, but not in the right way. I think it just goes to show you that sometimes life is way more fun when you throw away the map or vacation without a thought to oral hygiene. Or when you get a basic idea for a recipe and then just make it up anyway.