Recipe review
Oct. 3rd, 2023 11:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akinoameSo I made the Waldorf-Astoria's red velvet cake, albeit as cupcakes and with a slight change to the icing.
Results: Very moist cake, delicious, but decidedly not red, even with the 1 tsp of red food coloring it calls for. It just ends up being an incredibly dark-colored chocolate. Which is still delicious. I recommend just foregoing the food coloring and making this as a chocolate cake. The 1 1/2 pounds of beets are easier to work with if you mash them before pureeing them (although I admit that I have a small food processor, so I had to use a blender; if you have a big food processor, you might have an easier time), and I was terrified when I just smelled beets and tasted them in the batter, but the odor and flavor are gone by the time it bakes.
My icing adjustment: I ended up using 16 ounces of mascarpone to 8 ounces of cream cheese, partly because I don't have an immediate use for 4 ounces of mascarpone and don't want to waste it, and partly because I'm honestly not the biggest fan of cream cheese anyway. This tastes fantastic and honestly better with a dark chocolate cake rather than a true red velvet, but my icing is very soft and needs to be refrigerated before I frost any of the cupcakes. Mind you, there are two other reasons why this might be the case: 1) whipping cream to "soft peaks" is just as unintelligible to me as "whip to Twin Peaks," so I might have under-whipped it; and 2) I live in Florida, which can be accurately described as "Where it's flat and immense / And the heat is intense / It's barbaric, but hey, it's home."
But yes. Delicious, but not red. Also added chocolate chips to the last batch of cupcakes since red velvet is this weird chocolate cake that does not taste like chocolate.
Results: Very moist cake, delicious, but decidedly not red, even with the 1 tsp of red food coloring it calls for. It just ends up being an incredibly dark-colored chocolate. Which is still delicious. I recommend just foregoing the food coloring and making this as a chocolate cake. The 1 1/2 pounds of beets are easier to work with if you mash them before pureeing them (although I admit that I have a small food processor, so I had to use a blender; if you have a big food processor, you might have an easier time), and I was terrified when I just smelled beets and tasted them in the batter, but the odor and flavor are gone by the time it bakes.
My icing adjustment: I ended up using 16 ounces of mascarpone to 8 ounces of cream cheese, partly because I don't have an immediate use for 4 ounces of mascarpone and don't want to waste it, and partly because I'm honestly not the biggest fan of cream cheese anyway. This tastes fantastic and honestly better with a dark chocolate cake rather than a true red velvet, but my icing is very soft and needs to be refrigerated before I frost any of the cupcakes. Mind you, there are two other reasons why this might be the case: 1) whipping cream to "soft peaks" is just as unintelligible to me as "whip to Twin Peaks," so I might have under-whipped it; and 2) I live in Florida, which can be accurately described as "Where it's flat and immense / And the heat is intense / It's barbaric, but hey, it's home."
But yes. Delicious, but not red. Also added chocolate chips to the last batch of cupcakes since red velvet is this weird chocolate cake that does not taste like chocolate.