Devils, Red Velvet (Remixed) and Stout.

Happy New Year to my readers. Which is probably a total of 2, since I've been so horrible at keeping up with this thing. Of course, with the holiday season, comes baking. Over this holiday season, I baked Martha's Devil's Food Cupcakes, I gave her Red Velvet another try and I made her Stout Cupcake. I hope you enjoy, and am making it a "20 ones" resolution (I hear that's the new way to say 2011) to be more consistent with the blogging.

First came the Devil's Food Cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache Frosting. I made them to celebrate my brother and his wife's first wedding anniversary, which happened to be near Thanksgiving. I'm not a huge chocolate person, but it was next in the book, and figured it would be a nice additional dessert to our already dessert heavy Thanksgiving meal. Either way, here's what Martha says about Devil's Food. She writes that the meaning behind the Devil's Food part is that the chocolate is so "tempting, or that the deep dark color is devilish". I was tempted at the batter stage of this cupcake, as it was one of the most delicious batters. I've started "tasting" my batters since I saw the bakers do it on Cupcake Wars. Great call. The ganache frosting took FOREVER to harden, as it's basically melted chocolate, corn syrup and heavy cream and you wait for it to firm up so it's not all liquidy. You can use it as a glaze, but I had other intentions for this little devil. I wanted to make these cakes special for the 1-year- newlyweds so I printed out a few pics from the big day, and stuck them in. The cupcakes went over well, but were mostly taken "to go" as the apple pie was the real star of the dessert table that day. 

For Christmas, what could be more perfect than the Red Velvet. Ugh. If you've read my entry about 

Jumbo cakes before the frosting

Red Velvet from a few entries ago, you know that I'm not too fond of Martha's version of the RV. But, since it was requested by my family (gotta please your clients) it had to be done. Plus it's red.... fitting for the holiday. In true Mindy fashion, I didn't exactly have all the correct ingredients. I didn't have buttermilk. But, I had some sour cream and skim milk... so I figured it was an even tradeoff. I also substituted some of the cake flour-- too cakey, for regular flour. The big secret is that when adding the massive amounts of oil, I ran out. I had to improvise and use olive oil. Since red velvet is technically a chocolate flavor, I added some chocolate chips to bring that out. The best part about making these cakes, is that I got to test out my new cupcake pans! As you can see in 

the picture, these things are jumbo! They ended up being fantastic, and actually red thanks to the addition of massive amounts of red dye. Merry Christmas, I do like Red Velvet cupcakes.

 What a better way to ring in the new year than with a girls get-together and Stout Cupcakes. Surprisingly, I had every ingredient required to make this recipe. Including molasses, nutmeg, a random weird beer and orange zest... and a zester which I never realized was a zester. My initial reaction to the smell of these just baked cupcakes, was that they were overpowering with molasses. They were almost more of a gingerbread cake than a stout cake. I'm sure if I would have used a Guinness instead of my Brown Shugga' brew it would have resulted in a more beery flavor. I baked them in the morning, and did a "serve immediately" on the Stout Glaze, which is made by mixing powdered sugar and beer. Sounds delicious right? It earned OK reviews from my girlfriends, and I agree with them. Martha did say to pair it with a stout, milk was the favored drink in my place.
 

Total cupcakes baked: 24 Jumbo, 35 regular

Martha "inspiring ideas" completed: 5 (Including frostings, the photo adornment was her idea too!)