Got Beets In My Cake!!! – Eggless Red Velvet Cupcakes
I had never seen or heard of a Red Velvet Cake till I started blogging, about 2 years ago. I thought I was one of the few who didn’t, but it turns out that this cake is not all that well known outside the U.S.
*I used 3 medium sized beets and got approximately 1 1/2 cups of purxe9e.
Wash the beets, scrape/ peel and slice them. Cook them (steam cook or microwave) till theyu2019re well done. Cool and purxe9e the cooked beets along with about 3 or 4 tbsps of water, in a blender till smooth. Keep aside. You can do this ahead and refrigerate the purxe9e for a day or else freeze it till required.
To make the cupcakes, first whisk together the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder and salt in a bowl till well mixed. Keep aside.
Put the purxe9ed beets, oil, lemon juice and vanilla extract into another bowl and lightly whisk together till mixed well.
Pour this into the bowl with the dry ingredients and mix just enough to combine. Divide the batter equally between 12 cupcake tins lined with paper cups.
Bake the cupcakes at 180C for about 20 to 25 minutes. A skewer/ toothpick inserted into the centre should come out clean once theyu2019re done.
Cool completely and decorate with frosting of your choice. The usual choices are butter roux (boiled) frosting or cream cheese frosting.
Mascarpone Frosting:
*To make your own mascarpone cheese (enough for this recipe), heat 150ml of 25% cream over simmering water till it reaches a temperature of 82 to 85C. Add 1 1/2 tsp of lemon juice or white vinegar to the hot cream and stir till it thickens a bit (curdles). The thickened cream should coat your spoon well.
Take this curdled cream off the heat and allow to cool. Pour this into a strainer lined with a cotton towel and allow to drain in the fridge, overnight. Please note that very little u201cwheyu201d drains out here, unlike for paneer or ricotta.
Your macarpone is ready to use. Use it within 4 days of making it.
To make the mascarpone frosting, beat the chilled cream till stiff. Add the sugar and vanilla extract and beat till well incorporated.
Using a spoon, break the lumps in the mascarpone. Add this to the whipped cream, and beat on slow speed just long enough so that the mascarpone is well incorporated into the cream.
Use to decorate the cupcakes as desired. This frosting pipes well but stays soft, so it would be a good idea to refrigerate them until ready to be served.
Notes
Verdict:These cupcakes are most definitely RED, no doubts on that score. I was expecting them to be quite dense because of the beets, but they really weren’t very dense at all.These cupcakes do have a very strong tang from the lemon juice which is great if you like lemon in your desserts. We really do not, yet didn’t find the cakes too bad. They are especially good with the light, creamy and not too sweet mascarpone frosting.I understand that the RVC should have a suggestion of chocolate about it, but we couldn’t taste that in these cupcakes.So are these really red velvet cupcakes? I don’t have an answer to this question as I have never met a RVC before.I understand there are two schools of thought on this. One group thinks that RVC has to be traffic stopping red (or close enough) and this can only be achieved with food colour from a bottle. Anything else does not qualify for the RVC label.The other group does not understand the fuss about the colour and believes the traditional RVC didn’t use food colour but depended upon chemistry of the ingredients (sometimes with a little help from beets) to achieve a faint tinge of red and texture in a brown chocolate cake.But these cupcakes are RED, and they don’t owe that colour to chemicals or insects, so I’m happy. They also most definitely do NOT taste of beets which is another plus in my book. They’re also eggless.So if these are your demands in a RVC, I would definitely recommend this recipe.As for fellow RVC co-conspirers (or the four Velveteers as we call ourselves for now), Alessio’s cake is reddened with raspberry, while Pamela used beet juice in her heart shaped cake, while Asha decided to go the traditional way to colour her cake. (I shall add the links as soon as they post their RVCs sometime today.)Do keep watching our spaces to see what we get together and make next!
