Cream Cheese Frosting

Last week I posted about Red Velvet Cupcakes. I frosted mine with a very easy to make Cream Cheese Frosting. I once again consulted my Magnolia Bakery Cookbook, below is the recipe.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

1 pound cream cheese (that's about 2 bricks of it) , softened and cut into pieces
6 tbsp unsalted butter, softened and cut into pieces
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
5 cups (OMG I KNOW) powdered sugar

I thought for sure this would be wayyy too much and almost halved it, but it frosted the entire recipe of red velvet and I had just enough left to lick off my fingers.

In a large bowl with a mixer, (I, again, used my Kitchen-Aid) beat the cream cheese and butter until nice and smooth. Then add the vanilla, and beat well.


Next, very slowly and gradually, cuz the stuff goes everywhere, add the powdered sugar, a half a cup at a time.


Scrape the sides down after about 2 1/2 cups worth of sugar has been added. Once all added, cover and chill for about 2-3 hours, but not much longer so it can thicken before frosting.


To frost you can go about it a few ways. If you are pressed for time or don't use piping tips, you can just slather it on there with a butter knife or frosting spatula. That isn't who I am, but if it's you by all means, go hog wild! If you wish to use a pastry bag with a piping tip, use the largest one you've got. If you don't know how to use a pastry bag, watch this.


Then once again, by all means, go hog wild! I pipe my frosting on in big circular swirls. Lots of frosting on red velvet is the only way to go.

Then I got all fancy and sprinkled the living daylight out of them.

VOILA!

Red Velvet Cupcakes!

This post is soooo long overdue, sorry!!

For Kristi's Birthday I made her a batch of Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting. All from scratch!

I planned on just using a box cuz I had almost NO time to do this, but to my dismay, Red Velvet Cake Mix is very hard to find. So I sucked it up and just decided to make them the good old fashioned way.

I took a cue from my most favoritest cookbook, More from Magnolia Bakery, and dove in.

Red Velvet Cupcakes:


3 1/3 cups cake flour (not self-rising)
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 1/4 cups sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
6 tablespoons red food coloring (I used one whole jar of frosting dye gel from Wilton's)
3 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 /12 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1 1/2 tsp cider vinegar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda

Preheat your oven to 350, and get your cake pans greased and floured then lined with waxed paper. I decided on cupcakes, so I just used liners, but three 9-inch cake rounds could be also used if you wanted to do a layer cake.

In a small bowl, sift the cake flour and set aside. It's very important to use cake flour because it creates a nice delicate tender crumb, and substituting all purpose flour can get tricky. If you can't find cake flour and only have all purpose, use this article as a guideline.

In a large bowl with an electric mixer, (I used my Kitchen-Aid) cream the butter and sugar until super light and fluffy. It should take around 5 minutes and should look like below.

Add the eggs one at a time, cracking into a separate bowl to make sure you get no egg shells, and then beating well after each addition.


In another small bowl we're going to make our red mixture! Using a small whisk or fork mix well the cocoa, vanilla and red food coloring until smooth. It's a pretty thick mixture so make sure you clean out the whisk a few times as you mix to ensure it's even.

It should look pretty red as above. When it's mixed, go ahead and add it into the batter.

The color should be nice and bright red when it's done mixing.

In another small bowl (omg I know right? I just rinsed and used the same dang bowl) mix the buttermilk and salt. It sounds odd, but just do it ok? You are going to alternate adding this mixture with the flour into the batter in as equal of 3 parts as you can get.


This is when it starts looking like the kind of cake batter you want to lick off the spatula. With each addition just mix til incorporated, but make sure you don't over beat. This is where Michelle's brother Jim would make a lewd remark.

In that same small bowl, once again rinsed clean, mix the cider and vinegar to make the kind of thing found inside a 7th grade Science fair volcano. It's going to foam up. It's ok, just go ahead and add that into the batter as well.

Turn off the mixer, scrape the sides down into the bowl and mix well again until the batter is nice and smooth. Divide the batter equally among your chosen pans.


For a layer cake bake them for 30-40 minutes, cupcakes about 15-20. They should be done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with small crumbs. Let them cool and then frost with the icing of your choice.

Banana Bread!

So after the GM Diet, I had so many leftover ripe bananas, I decided to pawn them off on Jim, since he eats one a day for lunch, but he had just bought some and wasn't having it, (Plus they really were too ripe to do much with). He regifted them back to me and suggested that I make him some banana bread instead. The word "Spoiled" comes to mind...

I used one of my abfab recipes from the More from Magnolia Bakery Cookbook. It's a must for Bakeryphiles.


Alyssa Torey, the owner and author says,"Honestly, I was never a big banana bread fan until the idea of adding coconut came to me one afternoon and inspired this recipe, which turned out wonderfully."

You will need:

3 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 c canola oil
1 1/2 c sugar
3 large eggs, room temp, well beaten
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups ripe banana, mashed ( I used 4)
3/4 c sour cream
1 1/2 cups pecans, toasted and chopped (See note*)
3/4 c sweetened shredded coconut

*Note; To toast the pecans, place on a baking sheet in a 350* oven, for 15 minutes, until light brown and fragrant.


Preheat Oven to 350*

Grease and flour your pans. I used a silicone 6 mini loaf pan, and it worked well. You can also use muffin tins, a 10 inch tube pan, or whatever you fancy.

In a bowl sift together the flour, cinnamon, salt and baking soda, and set aside.


In a large bowl or mixer, beat together oil and sugar until well mixed, add eggs and vanilla and beat well.


Add bananas and sour cream.


Add the dry ingredients, one cup at a time, until just combined.


Stir in pecans and coconut.


Pour batter into pans.


Depending on the size of you pan baking will take anywhere from 30-60 minutes. A full loaf pan will take the longest. My mini loaves took about 40. Just keep checking until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, or with dry crumbs.


Let cool for about an hour and serve with nummers butter, or spray butter (which is what we used.)


So I took two loaves over to Jim's for him and his roommate Lee, and we all devoured them, except that Lee isn't too fond of coconut, so he just had one bite.