#it’s adapted from a recipe in the comments of the song banana bread by Cavetown

[show-stoppin-enby]

Made red velvet cupcakes for my friend’s birthday!!

[recipe here. I halved the quantities and did cupcakes instead of a 4-tier cake because they’re easier for sharing and I don’t have to Bring A Knife To School]

I think they’re the best looking thing I’ve ever baked! Normally when I try to bake cakes, they taste great, but look horrible. That’s partly because we don’t have any decorating tools like piping bags or those leveller pallet knife thingys, but also I generally lack skill at cake decorating. I put too much batter in the cupcake paper wrapper things, so I had to cut the edges where they had come out of the oven like this:

I added a heaped tablespoon of icing on top, rotated each cupcake and sort of swirled/flattened it with the spoon, and then sprinkled the crumbs from the trimmed edges on top. Probably the first time one of my baking mishaps has added to the aesthetic value of a cake, but I’m not complaining!

I had one and can confirm they’re delicious!! There was one minor cock-up and one slightly less minor one. My hand slipped as I was adding the red food colouring, and I accidentally added way more than I meant to, but it turned out fine. The recipe called for an absurd amount of sugar in the icing, and I haven’t made cream cheese icing in ages, so I didn’t know that it was an absurd amount, so the icing is much sweeter than I’d like, but still delicious.

Because it’s for my friend’s (belated) birthday, I decided to go fancy and use proper vanilla extract instead of vanilla essence! It may have just been the difference of prices acting as a placebo, but it tasted absolutely delicious! However, it is three times the price for not a great deal of difference, so it’s not a substitution I’ll be making often.

I’ve never made a recipe that’s called for both baking powder and baking soda before. Despite the amount of rise this should have given it, they turned out a bit flat (as seen above), probably because the batter was quite wet. The sponge itself is light and airy, so I can’t complain. My guess is it needed both BECAUSE of the consistency of the batter, but I’m not an expert. If someone is an expert, let me know! I’m curious!

I don’t normally do this type of thing on Tumblr, but it’s been fun!! I might do this more often.

Here’s one of the images again because I am unreasonably proud of how these turned out. Look At Them!!!