Red Velvet Brownies with White Chocolate Buttercream

I’ve only ever made red velvet cupcakes before, never anything else. Red velvet brownies sounded delicious, especially with white chocolate buttercream. Amazing. So amazing.

If you like buttercream (and who doesn’t?) and you like white chocolate, you’ll loooooove this icing. I was just eating it by the spoon (the leftovers of course hehe).

What’s perfect about this recipe, is the amount of buttercream you make is the exact width of the brownie which makes it look perfect when you cut them into nice even squares.

These are for sure a delicious treat (and perfect for any more holiday parties you might be attending this year!)

And just a hint: if you have vanilla bean paste, I recommend you use that instead of vanilla extract – it leaves nice little vanilla bean dots in the icing (and is extra delicious).

Ingredients

• 1 stick (1/2cup) butter, at room temperature
• 1½ cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1¼ cups flour
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 2 tablespoons red food colouring

Frosting:

• 1 stick ( ½ cup) butter, at room temperature
• 2½ cups powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 4 ounces white chocolate, melted
• ½ tablespoon milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350º. Line 8 x 8 pan with nonstick foil or regular foil. Grease regular foil with cooking spray if using.
2. In a small bowl, mix cocoa powder, food coloring and 1 teaspoon of the vanilla to form a paste. Set aside.
3. With a mixer, cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, then add the remaining teaspoon of vanilla. Then beat in cocoa paste. Add flour and salt, and mix just until combined.
4. Pour in prepared pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool before frosting.
5. Cream butter with mixer till fluffy. Add vanilla. Slowly mix in powdered sugar, then white chocolate. Add enough milk to reach desired consistency. Ice when brownies are cool.

Is It Too Late Now To Say Sorry

(anybody catch on to my blog post title?… I hope so, or I’m just going to look like an idiot)

I am SO sorry for not having new blog posts lately. I haven’t been on here since September, and that was not my intention. School just got the best of me, plus I moved out and into my own apartment so things got really hectic. Not to mention my kitchen is uber small, and when I say small I mean basically one counter space.

But I’m finally home now for the holidays, which means I will be posting tons of Christmas recipes (some which may be repeats, but hey who doesn’t love classics!!)

Soon I will be posting a recipe to some chocolate pumpkin banana bread I made last month (but never found the time to properly make a blog post, so I apologize again for that).

I do want to say, I was lucky to be a part of a holiday market at my university last week. They were looking for vendors, so I got in contact with the coordinators of the market and I was able to get a table on the last day, which was super exciting.

I baked like a crazy person the few days before, and managed to put out 6 dozen cupcakes, 4 dozen cookies, 2 dozen bars and an 8″ cake. It was a huge success and I was able to sell about 90% of my food (in 5 hours!)

Here is a list of what I made (and I actually have all made these previously, so I will attach links to all so you can see the recipe):

• Vanilla Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream
• Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream
• Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes
• Malted Kit Kat Blondies with Malted Chocolate Drizzle
• Brown Butter Crinkle Cookies with Salted Caramel Frosting
• Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies
• Chocolate Rose Cake

Here are some pictures (and I apologize for the awful, grainy pictures… Samsung camera just doesn’t compare to a DSLR camera… *first world problems*)

(and don’t forget to follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter!)

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cupcakes

So in honor of  my 19th birthday, I celebrated by making myself some chocolate covered strawberry cupcakes! They are vanilla cupcakes, with vanilla buttercream frosting with a chocolate covered strawberry on top. Very basic, but still really pretty (and delicious!)

VANILLA CUPCAKES

(makes about 20)

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 4 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 3 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup canola oil (or vegetable or extra light olive oil)
• 1 cup buttermilk

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 °F and line a cupcake/muffin pan with cupcake liners.
   In a medium bowl, whisk together 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, 1 1/4 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp baking soda and 1/2 tsp salt. Set flour mix aside.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat 2 eggs with the whisk attachment on medium speed (15-20 seconds).
3. Add 3/4 cup sugar and continue to beat on medium speed.
4. Add vanilla and oil and beat on medium speed.
5. Reduce mixer speed to medium/low and slowly add about half of the flour mixture. Add half of the buttermilk, then the rest of the flour mix and the rest of the milk. Beat until just combined and smooth, scraping down the sides of the mixing bowl. The batter should be thin.
6. Pour batter into a lined muffin pan. Fill to about 1/2 full.
7. Bake for 12 -14 minutes. Let them cool in the pan for a couple minutes, then remove.

Then I made a batch of my buttercream, dyed it a light pink colour and decorated away!

As for the chocolate covered strawberries, all I did was wash all my strawberries, then I melted milk chocolate chips and dipped each one in and placed them on a baking sheet lined with wax paper. I then used left over buttercream and piped a little drizzle over top of the strawberry.

Enjoy!!

 

Pink Ombre Rose Cake

Here’s my other cake I made yesterday – a pink rose ombre cake. If you haven’t seen my blue ombre cake I also made, feel free to check it out!

This was another really simple cake to make – 4 layers of red velvet on the bottom, with 2 layers of red velvet on the top. Decorated with buttercream, and then gold and pink sprinkles on the top with a cross/dove made out of fondant.

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Blue Ombre Buttercream Cake

Today can easily be defined as “What is happening.”

I had booked an order of 120 cupcakes, and two 2-tiered cakes all for the same day. My day went like this:

1. Woke up and cooked 5 batches of cupcakes (24 cupcakes per batch)
2. Let them all cool
3. Baked 6 red velvet cakes
4. Let them all cool
5. Realized I didn’t have enough eggs…went to the store
6. Began making 5 batches of buttercream for my 5 batches of cupcakes (3 vanilla, 1 cream cheese and 1 chocolate)
7. Decorated all my cupcakes
8. Realized I ran out of icing sugar…went to the store
9. Began cutting, stacking, icing my first cake
10. Decorated it
11. Realized I needed more piping bags…went to the store
12. Took a 20-minute break to eat chicken wings
13. Did the same for the second cake
14. Then spent 78 hours cleaning the kitchen

It was just exhausting. It took me just under 10 hours, breaks not included. Loved every minute of it, but real tiring! Also the kitchen in my house is really small so the space was very limited which made it tricky… and hot, my god was it ever hot in there. Every 2 minutes I was walking out on my front step to cool down (because it’s -20 out there) and now I think about it, anyone who was watching me must have enjoyed my outfit consisting of my purple polka dot shorts, pink socks, a cat t-shirt and my apron…oh dear.

Any-who, it was a super fun time and I really had a lot of fun (plus got to snack on extra cake/cupcake leftovers so that’s always a bonus hehe!)

Today I am showing you my one cake I made, for a Confirmation. Tomorrow I’ll post my other cake I made, following the kinds of cupcakes I made. Hope you guys enjoy!

All I did for this cake was bake 2 red velvet cakes, sliced them both horizontally and then used buttercream to stack them. I cooked another red velvet cake, but in a smaller pan and placed that on top.

I then iced my entire cake with a ‘crumb coat’ and let that sit for 10 minutes.

I made a double batch of buttercream and divided it into 4 bowls and died them all blue, starting with the darkest and ending with the lightest.

I used this tip and piped around, starting from the bottom and working to the top.

Then I just mixed gold and blue sprinkles and added them on top of the cake. I cut out a cross and a dove out of fondant, and stacked them on top, and ta-da!

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Valentine’s Day Fleur-de-sel Caramel Brownies

Sorry if this is a day late for Valentine’s but hey, if you aren’t celebrating it until today/tomorrow, or if you just simply want a pretty looking caramel brownie for yourself, well these will do the trick! (If you haven’t seen my other Valentine’s treats check out my Valentine’s Day Cupcakes and Valentine’s Day Sugar Cookies)!

These are so good. Like. So good. The caramel on the top is so tasty, you could honestly eat it by the spoonful when making it. And the brownie batter is so delicious, it’s probably my favourite brownie recipe yet.

These are pretty rich, so as much as you’d love to eat brownie after brownie, you’d definitely need to take a break in-between and drink some milk!

I got these from The Newlywed Chefs, and they have the yummiest recipes, I’m so happy I came across their blog. I’m definitely going to try out more of their recipes.

I found the caramel was really difficult to make (probably because I have only made caramel a couple times in my baking life!), because instead of browning the butter like you normally would, you browned the sugar instead. This process was really tricky because you didn’t want to A. burn the sugar but also B. turn it into sugar candy/rocks/whatever! (Which I did the first time). I was whisking, whisking, whisking and all of a sudden after 14 minutes it turned into hard sugar! After doing it the second time I realized what you need to do to make sure it works:

• Don’t whisk/stir – instead, shake the pot (by using the handle) so you are swirling the sugar/water mixture. Occasionally scrape the sides of the pot with a pastry brush to avoid any of the sugar hardening on the sides (if this happens, don’t worry because mine did too. All this means is that you are loosing some of the mixture for when you make the caramel… but don’t worry it’s not a problem)
• Don’t walk away from the stove!
• And lastly, just keep your eye on the mixture. I find when you’re browning anything, you’re constantly looking at it and it’s hard to tell if it’s even turning colour because your eyes are glued to the mixture. Keep moving your eyes around so you aren’t constantly staring at it so you can properly tell if it’s turning colour (or even get a friend/family member to help!)

Ingredients:

Brownies:

• 2 sticks unsalted butter
• 2 cups milk chocolate chips
• 4 oz. semi-sweet baking chocolate, chopped
• 3 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Fleur de Sel Caramel Topping:

• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2  cup water
• 1/2  cup unsalted butter, cubed
• 2 teaspoons fleur de sel
• 1 teaspoon fleur de sel to sprinkle

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Place parchment paper in a 13×9 baking pan and set aside.
2. In a medium pan over medium heat, begin to melt the two sticks of butter. Once butter is melted, remove from the stovetop and mix in the chocolate chips and baking chocolate. Stir until it’s melted. Cool to room temperature.
3. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar, and vanilla together. Whisk in the entire chocolate mixture. Set aside.
4. Using a separate small bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Slowly add this mix to the other chocolatey bowl, and stir with a wooden spoon. Once mixture is thoroughly combined, pour into the baking pan, and evenly spread with the spoon.
5. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of the brownies comes out clean. Cool completely. They will look wrinkly, and that’s okay.
6. In a separate tall saucepan, combine sugar and water. Place over medium-high heat. Boil sugar, occasionally swirling the pot and scraping down sides with a wet pastry brush. Do not stir though, as sugar boils and reaches a dark amber colour, about 12 minutes.
7. Don’t walk away from this. The next part needs to happen quickly. Remove from heat and immediately whisk in cream, butter, and salt until smooth. Pour over cooled brownies and sprinkle with additional fleur de sel. Allow brownies to set for an hour, or as long as you can wait.
8. Once cool, transfer brownies to a cutting board and peel back the parchment. Cut into shapes and serve.

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Adapted from The Newlywed Chefs

Pink Ombre Macaron Cake

My family and I celebrated my mom and Uncle John’s birthday this weekend. They both share a  birthday in January, so we always combine the two and celebrate both at the same time!

John’s favourite cake is lemon, and my mom’s is chocolate so I combined those and made a 4 layer cake, both lemon and chocolate. John also loves raspberry, so I made a raspberry filling (recipe down below) and put that in-between the layers along with a layer of my buttercream.

To create the look of the cake, all I did was make a double batch of buttercream and divided it into 4 bowls. I put a small drop of Wilton’s Red Food Colouring into the first bowl, and increased my amount each time.

Then I piped with Wilton’s 126 piping tip, starting at the bottom of the cake with the darkest layer and worked my way up!

Hope you guys had a lovely weekend!

 Here’s what the inside looked like!!

RASPBERRY CAKE FILLING

Ingredients:

• 2 12 ounce packages of frozen raspberries (with no syrup)
• 1 1/3 cups water
• 1 1/2-2 cups granulated sugar (I used 1 1/2 and it was very sweet, so keep that in mind!)
• 2 tablespoons of lemon juice (optional)
• 5-6 tablespoons of cornstarch dissolved in 1/2 cup of water

Directions:

1. In a saucepan combine the raspberries, water, sugar, and lemon juice.
2. Bring to boil and simmer for 15-20 minutes or until the raspberries have broken down.
3. Remove the mixture from the heat and strain with a fine mesh sieve. Return the strained mixture to the heat.
4. Dissolve the cornstarch in 1/2 cup of water.
5. Whisk the mixture into the raspberry mixture.
6. Bring the mixture back to a boil and simmer for 5 more minutes, stirring occasionally.
7. Remove from heat and cool completely, stirring every once in a while (I transferred my sauce into another bowl and stuck it in the fridge to help speed the cooling process).
8. It will begin to thicken like a jelly, so make sure you keep an eye on it and stir it often for easier spread on the cake.