Sometimes I get the impression that some people don’t actually try and make the recipes that they publish. I have made so many things over the years that come out completely wrong/different/taste odd that I have a set amount of times someone’s recipes can go wrong before I ditch them from my life. Normally I’d blame myself when things go wrong but I know I can bake so after two duff recipes I never let people darken my doors again.
One of my issues is with Dr Oetker red food colouring. I made Red Velvet Cupcakes a couple of years ago and they were beautiful. It takes a serious bit of baking to beat red velvet cake and these were immense. I then went around to a friend’s house to make them with her daughters but couldn’t find my usual food colouring – Langsdale. I’d read in the Hummingbird Bakery book that Dr Oetker made a good one so bought that. Now I should have been alerted to potential issues when I saw that it was syrupy and not watery and that it smelt of strawberries. Odd. Anyway they didn’t turn out well as the food colouring made the tops pink and that was about it. Seriously, why would anyone recommend it? It doesn’t work and makes the cakes smell disturbingly of strawberry! I’m sure that the Hummingbird Bakery probably use some professional brand so just say that. Anyway, I abandoned all hope of making them again, as everywhere stocks Dr Oetker and nothing else, until this weekend I saw that Waitrose were selling their own brand. Yay!
Now I had lost my previous recipe so went to a trusted source – Recipe Rifle. It’s an amazing blog so check it out. (I may also have a slight girl crush on the woman who writes it). It’s obvious that she cooks everything she writes about and I’ve had tons of success with her recipes in the past. She has a recipe for Red Velvet Cupcakes but I ignored her warning that it didn’t work out for her. On I ploughed, happily making the cupcakes until disaster struck. They were brown. So there is either too much cocoa powder, the food colouring is weird or a mixture of both. I think it's the food colouring as I'm guessing my old trusted brand has probably been banned by the EU for some reason or other. It's probably made from horse.
So no recipe this week as I just covered the brown cakes in chocolate frosting, gave them to my work colleagues and had a sulk in the corner. If you want to do as I did check the recipe out on Recipe Rifle, completely ignore her advice and make them anyway. I'll continue my hunt for red food colouring and revisit these again soon.
I've read that it's a chemical mixture between bicarb and vinegar that helps make the cakes go red, though I can't speak from experience. Having just relocated to England I can sympathise about the red food colouring dilemma- there just doesn't seem to be anything decent in the stores. I had a similar horror story with the Dr. Oetker brand- it turns everything PINK. I had to use a whole bottle just to get my icing to look almost red. If you are in London though duck around to the Jane Asher store in South Kensington or buy online, they stock proper professional gel food colours which are more likely to give a better result. I have to make a red velvet birthday cake next month so fingers crossed it all works out.
ReplyDeleteThanks - I'll look into that. I have thought that I need to look into gels or pastes as they seem to be what professionals use. Good luck with your birthday cake!
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