Red Velvet for you, Red Velvet for me..

It seems to have turned into a tradition that I make Nadine something Red Velvet for her birthday since she told me that was her favourite when we first drunkenly met. The first cake I baked I stirred with a fork. It took hours and turned out shit and tasting like food colouring, but everyone ate it! The next I made red with beetroot, but it kind of baked brown...though I've read if you add lemon juice it retains it's colour. Anyone tried this?

So this lot of cupcakes I followed the recipe for Crimson velvet cupcakes in VCTOTW (I think that's what they are called), except I left out the almond extract for nut allergic eaters. I also only used about 1.5 tbsp of food colouring because two seemed like the WHOLE BOTTLE. It didn't seem to affect the recipe result. They turned out so red also because I used white flour. They'd still be red with wholemeal but not as brightly coloured.

WHICH WAS DELICIOUS! The cakey part itself isn't particularly stand-out (though still good), but to me a red velvet is all about the contrast between the cake and the cream cheese icing. My icing is just 1/4 cup each of margarine and vegan cream cheese, 2 cups of sifted pure icing sugar and 1 tsp of vanilla extract. Mmmm.

I really wanted to put those silver balls on them to make them all fancy and festive, but did you know those things have gelatin in them? Ew. They are rock solid balls of sugar, you wouldn't think they'd need it aye. Oh well, no silver balls for us :( (Nadine said she didn't like them anyway haha).

Anyway, yay cupcakes. Oh. and I know red food colouring is generally cochineal, but I looked up all the numbers in the ingredients list of Queen's Pillar Box Red (that you buy at Woolies) and none of them appeared in my handy little vegan additive food guide so I was pretty confident that it wasn't. However, I emailled Queen Fine Foods today to find out for sure so hopefully they get back to me soon :) The internet yielded no results.

We gave half of these to my sister and her boyfriend who were looking after the cats when we went away, so we didn't have to eat them all. Pretty sure they were much appreciated.

Titles are hard to come by...

I got my race card in the mail, finally! Check out that number. Apparently there's about 50,000 people doing this thing. Dude. Are there that many people in Australia? Far out. I've been keeping up with my training quite well. I can now run jog 4.5km without stopping, for which I am quite proud.

Nadine baked me some cupcakes (woohoo!) today. She chose the Dulce sin Leche cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. But for the icing, instead of what it said she just made a basic chocolate icing which was delicious. I want another one but apparently I have to make them last til Saturday. Bah.

I had a beer the other night and a friend decided to join me :) I nearly had a heart attack, but it wasn't nearly as bad as when the cane toad came flying out of the potting machine at me! It was still alive so we let him go. Poor thing must've been terrified going around and around. I also nearly stood on a water dragon - the animals are coming out now! Just in time for spring :)

Birthday cupcakes :)

These are the cupcakes we made in replacement of the failed carrot cake cupcakes for my dad's birthday :) They are the chai latte cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and are pretty amazing! I topped them with a vanilla cream cheese (I used King Land Soy Cream Cheese) icing with dusted cinnamon and grated 85% dark chocolate.

The recipe for the icing in the book makes a fair bit more than I needed for the actual cupcakes (which Nadine baked by the way) so I ate the rest out of the bowl. And felt sick. Also pretty sure my teeth will fall out.

Without icing



We figured out my carrot cake cupcakes didn't work because there was too much liquid in it (all the oil came out and dripped through the paper ugh). One of the ingredients is yoghurt and I used my homemade stuff which has a fair bit more water in it than store bought stuff. Ypghurt is also in the chai cupcakes but Nadine drained off the water and strained even more water out of the yoghurt and look! They turned out perfect.

Or maybe Nadine can just bake cupcakes and I can't!

Piping icing is messy. My piping bag is quite ancient and it sort of leaked out. I used a large star shaped nozzle.

Dammit now I want more.



Mmm Chocolate

I bought myself some new cookbooks for my birthday (cuz I totally need more cookbooks...) and they arrived yesterday!

And today was more of the ming numbing sameness as it has been for the last month or so so I was really hankering for a sugary sweet treat when I got home and Nadine had made me cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World! these are the Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes, which she chose because it didn't have icing and she didn't need to make soymilk for it (we had run out). These are rich rich chocolately cupcakes with a hint of cayenne with cinnamon and cocoa sprinkled on top with icing sugar. It's made with coconut milk (hence the not needing to make more soy) which made it even richer.

Yum. Exactly what I wanted! She even put them in little paper cups :)

---

You Know You Hate Your Job When...You wish it was you who had the flat tyre on the way in, not your supervisor. Ha.

The cupcakes fixed it all though!