The Velvet Escapades

Three or four years ago, a friends' mum sent her 21 Red Velvet cupcakes for her 21st birthday. This was my introduction to Red Velvet Cake, I was intrigued, but not entirely impressed- which is odd because they came from Charly’s Bakery (home of Mucking Afazing cakes). 

Anyway, I did a little research and discovered that ‘authentic’ RVC is coloured with beetroot juice, a trend that originated during the food rationing of the second world war. The farmers daughter in me was well excited, my dad is forever harvesting golden beets (basically a miniature beetroot, yellow in colour) or Jerusalem artichokes- and I’d found a cake that used beetroot juice. Hooray! 

Bizarrely, I struggled to find a recipe online that didn’t contain 5 or 6 bottles of food colouring- and they were all devoid of beetroot juice. I finally stumbled across this gem from a white carousel and added a few (very minimal alterations) before getting it just right. The result is a light, moist cake, deep red in colour with a lovely earthiness from the beetroot juice and sweetness from the frosting. 

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Ingredients
200 g cake flour 
120 g butter (melted and cooled)
250 g sugar
4 eggs (separate egg yolks and whites)
2 egg whites
125ml beetroot juice
25ml red food colouring (optional)
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
¾ tsp salt
125ml yogurt (plain or vanilla)
Directions
Preheat oven at 160°C (350°F – gas mark 4 ). Grease your cake tin, and place some baking paper in the base of the tin.
 In a small bowl, sift the cake flour together with the cocoa powder. Set aside.
Whisk the egg yolks together with sugar, vanilla extract and yogurt until it is light and double the volume (I did this in my trusty Kenwood Chef, I wouln’t advise trying it by hand). Slowly beat in the cooled melted butter and beetroot juice. Fold in the flour mixture into the batter until combined.
In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites with a dash of salt until the peaks are stiff. Gently fold it into the batter until all is combined. Pour the batter into the tin you decide to use (I used one 30cmx30 cm tin). Bake for 30 minutes, or until a wooden pick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. 
Let the cake cool on the wire rack for 10 minutes before inverting it. Once the cake is cooled completely, ice the beauty with cream cheese frosting. (for the frosting, I use 100g unsalted butter at room temp, 100g cream cheese and 200g of icing sugar, in the Kenwood)
As you can see in the picture, I cut my RVC into squares for serving. But splitting it open and slathering that frosting in the middle, as well as on top- it’s jolly wonderful!
In SA you can get bottled beetroot juice at Woolworths or the Wellness Center. I freeze the juice I don’t use until my next Red Velvet Escapade.

The Craving of Ginger

My fear when starting a blog was that I’d write one post and forget the password to the backend of it. Turns out my real challenge is more to do with writing the post, once the recipe has been followed and tweaked. Nonetheless, I’m going easy on myself. New job, winter (Southern Hemisphere) etc.

New job. Because I work Sundays, I have Tuesdays off. Lovely.  Winter. Cold weather sparked my almost forgotten obsession with ginger. I lifted this recipe from a book belonging to my flatmate, made some minor adjustments, and quelled the desires of the ginger fuelled monster within. Lovely.

These ginger-almond biscuits embody all of what I consider to be important in a biscuit. They are crisp, not too sweet and use fresh ginger (not the powdery stuff, I really don’t like that).

100g butter

120g castor sugar

120g treacle sugar

2 eggs

300g self-raising ground

100g ‘nibbed’ almonds (flaked almonds also work, I found they got a bit ‘lost’, but some people prefer them less obstrusive)

2 (lady) thumb sized pieces of ginger (peeled) (I grate mine on the mini grater setting, you could chop it finely- if there are little hairy strings- fret not, remove any thick looking ones, but for the most part, they dissolve into your biscuit upon baking)

Preheat the oven to 180.

Beat the butter, both sugars and eggs. I used regular salted butter, I have used unsalted for this recipe before but didn’t find the result warrants the price difference. My trusty KenwoodChef is one of the most notable items I own. Manfriend’s grandmother gave it to me (along with her sewing machine!) not very long in to our relationship. And it has been a joy to use. I know, it’s not fire-engine red and shiny or powder blue and oozing vintage charm-but it’s mine and heck! It’s bloody wonderful.

Stir in the flour, nuts and ginger and mix well.

Place tablespoons of the mixture onto a baking sheet and flatten them slightly, using wet fingers.

Pop into the oven for 12 minutes (or turning golden around the edges)

While warm, place onto a cooling rack, to encourage maximum crispiness.

I made a fairly large batch. Flatmate and I have a particularly large cookie jar(it sits next to an equally large marshmallow jar), but this recipe yields 30  biscuits.

Thanks to Manfriend-of-Flatmate for the handmaking of the cork trivet used in pictures. Very creative. Jolly good.

Ministry Pie

as my first post it seems only correct that the recipe be one that I'm most often asked for. i'm half proud of this one, kind of like getting a sterling grade on a paper you didn't work all that hard on. nonetheless, for Lindsay, Nick, Ashleigh, Alice and all the world

Ministry Pie

The amount of pastry you use will depend on whether you make 2 small pies or one big one- my advice is buy 1 extra roll of pastry: there is nothing worse than trying to get the scraps together to cover the pie- it’s an extra R10 that will save a lot of  stress and make your pie look profesh.(read: professional)(this serves 15 hungry people)

Pre heat the oven 200 C.NB do this first!

Sweat 2 TBsp butter, 3 onions(chopped) and 4 cloves minced/grated garlic over a medium heat (not hot or your onion will go brown- not good for this pie) in the biggest pot you own.

When they are soft add 12 chopped chicken breasts (the size is up to you, i like it chunky because if you chop it up small, it seems like less meat) turn up the heat and stir occasionally. Add 2 Ttsp salt and 1T tsp pepper.

While the chicken cooks, boil the kettle and prep the ‘soup’ in a large bowl.  Mix 2 large packets of Cream of Chicken Soup powder and 1 packet of White Onion Soup powder(or Mushroom Soup- i find the onion tastes less ‘fake’). Read the packets and see how much boiling water it calls for- add only half. Mix it all up (it will be gloopy) and make sure there are no lumps. If you can’t get rid of the lumps, use a whisk or pass the gloopy soupy through a sieve.

Once smooth add the gloopy soupy to your chicken and pour in 1 kg frozen veg (i use 750g of the mix of pea’s, carrot, green beans and sweetcorn, and 250g plain corn- i like corn). a splash of white wine at this stage is a nice touch but not essential.

Now you can wash up the dishes and clean the counters while giving the pot a stir now and then.

Once all the dishes are clean, get your pie dish out and line the inside with the puff pastry, and leave 2 cm hanging over the edge (sometimes the pastry shrinks). Pop it in the oven for about 15 mins- you dont want the pastry to cook totally, so keep an eye on it. It may puff up- dont worry-the filling will soon squash it.

Check that the chicken and veg are cooked properly, and that you are happy with the thickness of the filling- it WILL NOT thicken or cook in the oven, so be aware that the filling  will come out the same as it went in. If it is too runny, mix 2 TBsp corn flour and cold water in a mug, add and stir over the heat. Repeat until it is as thick as you’d like.

Spoon the filling into the pastry case and cover with the rest of the pastry- use a fork or your fingers to squash the raw pastry and cooked pastry edges together. Brush the top with milk and bake for 30-40 mins(till the top looks lovely.)

I always make this the day before, and then just pop in the oven- so thats an option if you’re free the evening before.:)