Daring Bakers Do Dallas

Oh OK.....Red Velvet Cake then!

I’m thrilled to have been invited to join a monthly baking group, collectively known as The Daring Bakers.


The Daring Bakers would like to thank Ximena of Lobstersquad for the fantastic work she has done to create our graphics.

The recipe selected for March was Red Velvet Cake which is a Southern US traditional recipe. You can read all about its history and various references to Red Velvet Cake here. The recipe I chose to use was provided by Peabody of Culinary Concoctions. It comes from Mrs Wilkes Boarding House in Savannah, Georgia and in true Southern style contains pecans. I didn’t use the nuts because it’s so hard to find fresh nuts in stores here. I resent paying for rancid nuts and it's not like you can tell from tasting just one. Don't you hate that feeling when you eat a nut that's off and you want to get the taste out of your mouth but are too scared to eat another nut in case it's off too? Bleah.


Red Velvet Cake
Serves 12 to 14

Ingredients
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
1 tsp white vinegar
2 1/2 cups cake flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 to 3 TBSP cocoa powder
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
5/8 ounce bottle red food coloring

Method
Preheat the oven to 350F
Cream the eggs, sugar, oil and vinegar
Sift the cake flour, baking soda, and cocoa together
Add the flour mixture to the creamed ingredients while beating
Slowly add the buttermilk
While still beating, add the vanilla and the food coloring
Pour into three 8-inch layer pans and bake for about 25 minutes
(I used 9" pans and they only took 15 minutes each)
Press lightly; if the layers are spongy, then the cake is done

Frost the cooled layers, assemble and frost the top and sides

Red Velvet Cake Frosting
1 (8 ounce/250g) package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter (125g)
1 (1 pound/500g) box confectioners sugar
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Combine the cream cheese and butter and melt over very low heat
Add the sugar, pecans and vanilla and mix well
If the frosting becomes too thick, add a little milk
Frost one 8-inch or 9-inch layer cake.


My taste testers at the office pronounced it moist and delicious and they were particulary excited about the cream cheese frosting. Hands up who would eat a piece of cardboard slathered in cream cheese frosting? The flavour of the cake is quite delicate and you can pick a slight chocolatey taste but the colour totally throws you off. Surprisingly the texture of the cake was just as good three days after baking - perhaps even better.

I don't think I'll be making Red Velvet Cake again other than for novelty value but it was definitely a fun challenge to be part of and I enjoyed making something something that has a bit of history to it. I'm looking forward to what's in store for next month.

It's Not Easy Being Green

This is one of the few recipes where I lower my "from scratch" baking standards to use a box cake mix as a base. The result is foolproof and guaranted to give you a tender, sponge-like cake. The original recipe called for a combination of orange and lime juices but since limes are ridiculously expensive in New Zealand at the moment and I have an abundance of lemons I thought I'd just use lemon juice. If you don't use extra food colouring the cake will turn out a pretty pastel shade of green rather than something that looks like it came out of the Hulk's kitchen.

St Patrick's Day Lemon Cake
Adapted from Robb Dabbs' Tropical Lime Cake

Ingredients
1 (18.25 ounce) package lemon cake mix (I used a white cake mix)
1 (3 ounce) package lime flavored jelly/gelatin mix
A few drops of green food colouring for extra greenness
5 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup fresh lemon juice
Glaze1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
2 cups icing/confectioners' sugar

Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C)
Grease and flour or line a 9 x 13 inch pan
In a large bowl, stir together the cake mix and lime flavored jelly
Combine the eggs, oil and lemon juice in a jug or bowl and mix well
Gradually add the blended ingredients to the dry mixture
Beat for 5 minutes using an electric mixer
Pour into the prepared pan
Bake for 40 to 45 minutes in the preheated oven, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean
When the cake comes out of the oven, prick holes all over it using a toothpick
To make the glaze, combine the lemon juice and icing sugar in a small bowl
Beat until smooth and pour over the hot cake, this will soak into the cake

Hay Hay it's Donna Day #10 Cheesecakes

The prodigious Peabody won the hosting rights to the lastest round of HHDD and chose cheesecake as the theme.

I am so indecisive and I'm such a procrastinator that I usually miss deadlines by the time I have selected my recipe. I knew that I wanted a baked cheesecake because I didn't want to mess with gelatine but other than that I could have gone in any direction. I thought I was onto a good thing by asking my work pals to choose and there were a few interesting contenders; a Russian fudge cheesecake or a baked cheesecake with caramel apple topping - both from Cuisine magazine or raspberry and milk chocolate cheesecake from Taste magazine. But then, as fate would have it, the April Taste magazine arrived in my mailbox last week and on the cover was a picture of the cutest little cheesecakes you've ever seen.

Due to copyright I can't share the recipe here but you can check it out online in April by going to Taste and searching for cheesecake. I can tell you though that the cheesecakes contained all the usual suspects - cookie crumb base (in this case ginger flavoured), cream cheese, sugar, eggs, vanilla, lemon rind and of course raspberries. The swirl idea is a great way to improvise and I imagine that a wee dollop of chocolate fudge sauce or caramel sauce would be an interesting variation. In real life the cheesecakes didn't look so yellow but hey I'm a crap photographer - get over it.


I'm still on a healthy eating kick and didn't dare try any of the cheesecake (OK so I might have licked the bowl) so I brought it in to work to share. There were a a few cheesecakes left over I said to one gal who had missed out during the day that she should take a couple home and share one with her husband. Let's just say he didn't get to try any - I guess they must have been good.

San Chow Bow

San Choy Bow? San Choi Bow? Sang Choy Bau? Pork in Lettuce Cups? However you spell it, it sure tastes good.

This is my adaptation of a recipe given to me by a friend from work. I haven't changed the ingredients from her recipe, just simplified the cooking steps; although I do increase the amount of mushrooms just because that's the way our household likes it. I also try and increase the veges just a little.



The above picture is me trying to do "mise en place" but that really only works if you are working from a recipe and can check off your ingredients. San Chow Bow has become so popular that we have it at least once a fortnight and I don't use a recipe anymore. A prize to the first commenter who can tell me what is missing.

San Chow Bow
Serves 3-4

Ingredients
2–3 cloves garlic
500g/1 pound minced (ground) pork
1 Tbsp oil
100-150g mushrooms, sliced
1 – 2 medium carrots, grated
1 medium red pepper, sliced
1 Tbsp sweet chilli sauce
1 Tbsp sherry or rice wine
1 Tbsp oyster sauce
1 Tbsp Hoisin sauce
1 – 2 Tbsp soy sauce
Grated ginger (I cheat and used ginger from a jar)
Iceberg lettuce (optional)
1 – 2 cups bean sprouts
Sliced water chestnuts
¼ cup chopped mint, basil or coriander (I seldom have any on hand and - you don't really miss them)
Steamed rice to serve

Method
Brown the pork in a non stick skillet (I don't use the oil)
Add the garlic
Add the mushrooms and cook til they soften
Mix all the sauce ingredients together and add to the pan
Add the red pepper
Reduce the heat and simmer for 8-10 minutes, adding the carrots for the last two minutes
Lastly add the bean sprouts and water chestnuts
Sprinkle with fresh herbs as desired
Serve in lettuce cups with some steamed rice
Alternatively, if you are as lazy as me, forget the lettuce and serve the pork mixture over rice in a bowl

Leftovers are great the next day despite the beansprouts and my friend tells me that it freezes pretty well too.

20 Years Ago Today

Meringue anyone?

What other exciting things happened in New Zealand in 1987?
2 March: Edgecumbe earthquake in the Bay of Plenty.
22 May-20 June: Inaugural Rugby World Cup hosted by both New Zealand and Australia, and won by New Zealand. Go the All Blacks!!
June: The New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act is passed.
July: The Māori Language Act makes Māori an official language.
1 August: The first Lotto draw.
20 October: The New Zealand stock market crashes following Black Monday on Wall Street. Share prices fell by 59 percent over four months.
December: New Zealand's first heart transplant takes place at Greenlane Hospital

My beloved's birthday is on Friday so we're going to call that our date night and we're going to my favourite restaurant - Bella's. Tonight though we're going out for a work dinner to a lovely restaurant called Cafe Nero; I'm a happy woman as long as I'm not cooking this evening.

Postscript:
During dinner, at 8:01 pm in fact, we felt an earthquake which measured 4.6 on the Richter scale. In a strange coincidence one of my dinner companions then told us all about how she remembered the big earthquake in Edgecumbe 20 years ago when she was 5. How about that?

Muffin Monday - Banana Chocolate Chip

I saw an announcement on Is My Blog Burning? for a one off event called Muffin Monday hosted by Elena of experiments and I thought to myself - hey something I can actually do! Instead of using Elena's basic recipe I went with something from one of my trusted recipe books. Only thing was that I didn't have any eggs. Did I let that stop me? No way! I decided to go for a banana muffin recipe because I figured that the bananas would do a fine job of keeping the muffins moist. While I didn't try the finished product myself as I'm restricting my intake of sweet stuff, my co-workers all pronounced the muffins "yummy". I know you'd be disappointed if I hadn't played around with the dairy and I haven't let you down today. I had some left over lite evaporated milk in the fridge so used half a cup of that together with half a cup of non fat milk. Whether that made any difference to the finished product I'll never know. Also, I took Lis's suggestion of adding some cinnamon to the mix. One taster commented on it so it must have been a pleasant addition.


Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins
Adapted from Simon and Alison Holst's 100 Muffins and Slices cookbook
Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients
100 grams (3 1/2 oz) butter, melted
2-3 ripe bananas (you need approx 1 cup)
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Method
In a large bowl mix together melted butter, mashed banana, vanilla essence and milk
In another bowl mix together the flour, baking powder, sugar and chocolate chips
Tip the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix until just combined
Do not overmix or else you will end up with tough, peak topped muffins
Spoon into prepared muffin pan
Bake in a preheated 220 C/430 F oven for 10-12 minutes
Leave in muffin pan for 5 minutes before turning out to cool on a wire rack