Will you be my Valentine? (Red Velvet Cake Roll Recipe)

I guess it is a little late to be asking that question since it is the day after Valentine's Day...  I'm not a huge Valentine's Day fan and so J and I usually do not exchange gifts, this year was no exception.  This does not mean that we don't celebrate it though!  I planned a nice dinner for us to enjoy at home because I'm would not even consider going close to a restaurant on Valentine's Day, going to the grocery store was enough of a pain!

On my way home from my interview (I think it went pretty well!! Crossing my fingers that I get the job!) I stopped by the store to get ingredients for a new dessert recipe!  It was funny to see people who were definitely grabbing last minute flowers and cards for their loved ones.  When I got home I changed out of my suit and into baking clothes.

J really likes red velvet cake and I've never had any so I decided to try yet ANOTHER Food Network recipe this week!  I decided to make a Red Velvet-Cherry Cake Roll.  I've never made a cake roll before, but was definitely up for the challenge.

Red Velvet-Cherry Cake Roll by Food Network Magazine

What you need for the batter:

• Butter (to butter the pan with)
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups cherry soda
• 2 tablespoons Dutch cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/3 cup buttermilk (I made mine by taking a cup of milk and adding a tbsp on vinegar)
• 3 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon red food coloring (this will turn it BRIGHT red!)
• 2 teaspoons almost extract
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Confectioners' sugar, for dusting

What you need for the filling:

• 4 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 1 1/2 cups cold heavy cream
• 2 teaspoons almond extract
• 1/3 cup confectioners' sugar

How to make the cake (Directions are from Food Network):

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter an 11-by-17-inch rimmed baking sheet and line with parchment paper; butter the parchment and dust with flour.

Bring the cola to a simmer in a medium skillet over medium-high heat and cook until reduced to 1/2 cup, 10 to 12 minutes. Let cool.

Whisk the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl. In a separate large bowl, whisk the granulated sugar, vegetable oil, buttermilk, eggs, food coloring, almond and vanilla extracts, and the cola syrup.

 Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just combined. 

 Spread the batter on the prepared baking sheet; bake until the cake pulls away from the pan, about 15 minutes. Let cool on the pan on a rack, 5 minutes.

Dust a kitchen towel (not terry cloth) with confectioners' sugar. Invert the cake onto the towel and peel off the parchment. Trim the cake edges. Starting with a short end, roll up the cake around the towel; let cool completely on a rack.

Make the filling: Whisk the cream cheese, 1/2 cup cream and the almond extract in a large bowl. Beat the remaining 1 cup cream and the confectioners' sugar with a mixer until soft peaks form; gradually fold into the cream cheese mixture. Chill until ready to use.

Unroll the cooled cake. Spread with the filling, then gently reroll the cake and transfer to a platter. Dust with confectioners' sugar.

This probably cracked because I didn't let the cake cool completely in the towel

While I was in the process of making the cake these arrived for me!

We enjoyed our delicious dinner of Salmon, rosemary potatoes, and cauliflower, and after letting ourselves digest a bit I pulled the cake roll out of fridge, sliced a piece for each of us and surprised J with some delicious cake!  For my first time experience with red velvet it was good, but I definitely enjoy other cake flavors better.

Hope all of you had a pleasant Valentine's Day!

Thanksmas & Pumpkin Cheesecake

I apologize for the mini-hiatus, with moving into the new apartment and Thanksgiving, J and I have been really busy packing, unpacking, and baking.  Hopefully it won't be to long before I can share before & after pictures of the apartment.  In the meantime I have some small crafts and recipes to share with you!

Today I'm sharing with you my absolute favorite recipe for pumpkin cheesecake!  For the past couple of years I've made sure to bring this to our family Thanksmas festivities.  What's Thanksmas you ask?  Well, at Thanksgiving we get together with my mom's side of the family and we usually celebrate Thanksgiving the day after (aka Black Friday) so everyone has time to et together and we can miss the bad traffic by travelling on Thanksgiving.  Since we do not get together for Christmas we do a secret santa at our Thanksgiving.  One year someone called our get together Thanksmas because it is a combination of the two holidays and it has stuck ever since.  Thanksmas is my favorite holiday because I get to be with my family and I personally think it has the best food of any holiday.

One year I experimented with this cheesecake even though I'm not a huge fan of cheesecake.  Now, every year I make this for our Thanksmas and other holiday parties because everyone asks for it.  It is the only Paula Deen recipe I use consistently.  It is creamy, the crust is just the right thickness, and the recipe is pretty simple.

I follow the recipe here with a slight tweak.  I make sure to put my cheesecake in a water bath to prevent cracking.  If you have not done this before:

1. Cover the outside of your springform pan with tinfoil before or after you make the crust, but BEFORE you pour in the filling.
2. Find a pan that can fit your springform pan in it comfortably.
3. Boil water, you will need to fill the pan with water up to the top of the cheesecake in the springform pan (But not the top of the springform pan!). **Make sure to place the springform pan into the pan and into the oven BEFORE pouring the water (otherwise it will be hard to move into the fridge).
4. Cook at the same temperature and length of time that the recipe calls for.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of this prior to our festivities, but this shows you how much we ate!

I highly suggest this recipe if you are a fan of pumpkin flavored desserts!!

Dulche De Leche Cupcakes

It has been a very busy past few weeks so I apologize for the lack of posts.  Soon I'll be sharing with you two of my favorite projects so far!  Both are in their final stages and I can't wait for them to be done.

Here is a small list of what has been going on recently:

• Went to my cousin's wedding with my Gma. What a fantastic celebration!
• Wrapping up the marking period at school. (I get a whole new group in one of my classes come Monday!)
• Celebrated my 25th birthday last Friday
• Watching some pretty awful and great college football games, including an incredible Rutgers win Saturday
• Worked on some fun projects, J says I'm becoming an old lady, but I disagree
• J and I are moving into our new place next Friday!

Since I don't have my projects to share with you, here is a recipe review for you.  I made cupcakes for G's birthday a little while back.  I came across this recipe at The Way the Cooke Crumbles.  I followed the recipe exactly so please check out the link above for the recipe.

I made the cupcakes the night before and the icing the day of so I can't tell you how well the icing help up over night.  What I can tell you was that I was disappointed in the cupcakes themselves, they were more bitter and dry than I was expecting.  On the other hand, the icing was DELICIOUS!  Airy and not too sweet, the perfect frosting for me (because I'm not a huge fan of super sweet, thick icing).  The icing belongs with a cupcake that is sweeter than this cupcake, but not ridiculously sweet.  The cupcake was good in theory but had a bitter after taste that was not pleasant.

The girls enjoyed the cupcakes and were impressed that I made all of it from scratch instead of a box.  I wish I understood baking a little bit better so I could giure out how to make these cupcakes the way I'd like them to be.  Overall, I highly recommend this frosting recipe, but the cupcake recipe you can skip if you have a better recipe for a caramel/dulche de leche cupcake.

I have a four day weekend from work his week because of the Teacher's Convention in AC so hopefully I will finish my projects and post them for you!

Happy Cupcake-making!

Nom Nom

Found these adorable cookies during a search for new dinner recipes...so cute!  I just recently tried using royal icing and find it to be really cool, but an odd flavor and texture.  It kind of reminds me of the frosting on top of frosted Poptarts (which I was never crazy about, unfrosted all the way!) but the taste is just eh.  J really likes the icing so if I decide to make them for an event I'm sure others will like them.  The possibilities with this icing are endless, I'm hoping to make some marbled looking ones by using sponges and food coloring soon, I'll be sure to put up pictures when I do.