Low-Dye Red Velvet Cupcakes

Happy Valentine's Day, all! I'm not a big Valentine person-- I used to teach in the public schools. Valentine's day is teenaged license for PDA, crying in the bathroom when one should be in class, questionable behavior in every nook and cranny the building has to offer, etc. But, in the spirit of fun and chocolate, I decided to make some treats for my office.

Red velvet and I have been in a blood feud for quite some time now. I love really good red velvet, but absolutely cannot rationalize the gross amounts of food dye used to achieve the red color. A little history lesson before we begin....red velvet, done correctly, is a chocolate cake with a red hue, not a white cake with a whole bottle of dye dumped in it as is common today. The red hue was the result of a reaction between the cocoa powder, buttermilk and vinegar. The red hue was easier to achieve using this method before the days of Dutch process cocoa, which is why you probably don't see it even if you are using your great-great-grandma's recipe. Over the past century, many methods for making red velvet have unfolded-- ranging from using beets (which, actually, started during WWII due to food rationing and not, necessarily, just to get a red cake), to making a white cake and dumping huge amounts of dye into the batter. (We've all had that cake, right? The BRIGHT RED cake that you can psychosomaticly feel turning your digestive tract into cancer with all its Red #40? No? Just me???)

Put simply, I hate food dye. Not to say I never use it, but I try to avoid doing so. I've been working for a while now to come up with a solid red velvet recipe that uses little to no dye, and I've gotten to this recipe here, where a deep maroon can be achieved with only one teaspoon of food color. One teaspoon in the whole batch-- I can live with that.

Fish Fingers and Custard: A Timey Wimey Birthday

A very fantastic lady I know turns 30 today. This weekend we celebrated with food, friends, *a few* adult beverages, and, or course, cake. Katy is possibly the biggest Dr. Who fan I've ever met, and, therefore, required a Dr. Who cake. Though this is far from a tutorial, I'm going to try and walk you through what I did in case you, too, have a Dr. who inclined person in need of a cake (I link to a bunch of free printables, too). If you are not familiar with Dr. Who, then nothing about the this cake will make sense, so just go with it and smile, ummkay? I've tried to include as many explanatory links as possible for anyone wishing to be who-enlightened.

I'd love to say I invented an amazing new flavor of cake to post here, but what I really did was use the apple cake recipe posted here and pair it with the caramel icing posted here, for an all around caramel apple flavor. Reviews were positive, so, YAY!

Cranberry & Apple topped Cheesecake

I had the pleasure of baking for my family and some awesome friends over the holidays, so I had to make sure I baked something extra delicious. It was the holidays, so I also wanted something easy so I didn't have to spend all day baking. Enter, what I like to call, the 'cheater cheesecake.' This cheesecake base recipe is based off of one on Kraft's website, and is super easy. No water-bath, no tricky ingredients, no complicated instructions. I put a graham crust on it so that you don't even have to worry about pre-baking a shell or mixing up dough. It's also almost impossible to mess up, which I know for a fact, seeing as I slightly over-bake it almost every time I make it and it has never come out anything but delicious.

The cranberry-apple topping is a beast of my own creation in response to the fact that I, one, wanted something unique, and two, find a lot of traditional toppings to be overly sweet.  The cranberries give this topping a tangy twist that helps balance the sweetness of the apples and the rest of the cheesecake. If you are really short on time or lacking in motivation, you can buy a can of pre-made fruit topping and forgo making your own. Since you can make the topping while the cheesecake bakes, it doesn't really add much time onto the process and it tastes way better than store bought, I say go for it-- but if you need that hour to clean your bathroom before your guests come over, or to get that mysterious stain out of your shirt before you go over to someone's house for dinner, I totally understand.