As the summers fresh harvest is drawing to a close, you might find that if your plants survived the heat, you are overloaded with vegetables like zucchini. Zucchini is one of those vegetables that's very versatile, but let's face it, we get sick of eating it all the time.
Thankfully, some creative mother ages ago (back in the medieval times to be exact) came up with a great way to disguise vegetables in layers of sugar and spice. The real story is that during medieval times, sweeteners were expensive and scarce, so in order to make a sweet bread, they used carrots, which is the vegetable with the highest amount of natural sugar after sugar beets. This is how carrot cake was born.
Although it's called carrot cake, it's actually a misnomer. Carrot cake, like zucchini bread, is a quick bread, which means it's a bread made with a chemical leavener, such as baking powder or baking soda, instead of yeast. In making quick breads, you mix all your wet ingredients together and then all your dry ingredients together. You add the wet to the dry and allow it to mix for several minutes.
Beyond carrot cake, zucchini cake, zucchini bread, muffins, and scones are just a few ways to blend the wholesome goodness of summer vegetables into the folds of deliciously sweet goodies made for early fall eating. In August's Bon Appetit magazine, you can find a great recipe for a zucchini pecan cake to get you ready for fall flavors like cinnamon and nutmeg.
Here are some other great recipes for some vegetables-masquerading-as-sweets concoctions:
Carrot Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Icing: I would add 1 cup of raisins or crushed pineapple to this recipe to make it a little bit more moist.
Sweet Potato & Zucchini Bread: A slightly more interesting version of plain old zucchini bread.
Carrot Muffins: Made with a little bit of whole wheat flour!
Carrot Ginger Scones: My recipe- a little bit of a twist on a popular ginger scone.
Around Pittsburgh, there are some amazing choices for carrot cake. Nearly every bakery in town has carrot cake or a carrot cake cupcake. The Pie Place, Bethel Bakery, Priory Not-So-Fine Pastries, Vanilla Pastry Studio, Oakmont Bakery, etc. Carrot cake has a nice place that sits between a traditional german style bakery and a newer, specialty bakery, so you are apt to find it many places. My favorite so far is the Whole Foods Market carrot cake, with the Pie Place's coming in close second.
Summer is coming to a fast close, with that 60 degree weather right around the corner, so get your veggies now, just hide them in a cake!
Whole Foods Market Carrot Cake on the Sugar Love Scale:
Taste ♥♥♥♥
Texture ♥♥♥♥
Appearance ♥♥♥
Overall ♥♥♥.75
Showing posts with label oakmont bakery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oakmont bakery. Show all posts
Friday, September 17, 2010
Red Velvet Cake- the basics
There are a lot of good box cakes. It's something you can make in a pinch when you are short on time and ingredients and need to bring a dessert. You can even doctor up box cakes to make them into something extra delicious by adding canned fruit, sour cream, applesauce, etc. But red velvet cake is just not something that can come from a box.
For starters, a good red velvet cake recipe uses buttermilk or sour milk (vinegar + milk) and a small dose of baking soda and vinegar to give it a slightly tangy, sour taste. Your red velvet box mix contains sugar, flour, shortening, cocoa powder and baking soda, plus a lot of stabilizers and preservatives. It only calls for eggs, oil, and water. So no matter what, you are going to miss that delightful hint of tang that a true red velvet cake gives you. And although the box might say it's moist and delightful, it's not going to hold a candle to a true red velvet cake.
The other key piece that makes a made-from-scratch red velvet cake so much better is the proportion of cocoa powder to flour. In a box cake, you are kind of stuck with what they think tastes best, but at home, you can play a little bit more to decide how much cocoa flavor you really want in the cake.
The origin of red velvet cake is unknown, but it's been around for a while. In the 1920's, it was the signature dessert at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Legend has it that in the 1960's a patron asked for the recipe and she received it, but was billed a LARGE amount for it. She payed it, but then spread the recipe in a chain letter. Whether or not this is true, remains to be seen, but red velvet cake has since made it's way onto menus and into bakeries across the country.
My preferred red velvet cake recipe is here. It's really moist and delicious and pairs well with a buttercream icing or a cream cheese icing. It also makes a nice base for red velvet gobbs, although you need to add an extra egg and more flour for it to bind correctly.
If I've convinced you to abandon box cake mix for red velvet cake, but you still aren't in the mood to make your own, there are certainly a few places in town with a great red velvet cake.
Vanilla Pastry Studio: they don't always have the "Elvis has left the building" red velvet cupcake, so you might want to call ahead, but April Simpson-Gruver makes a killer red velvet cake.
The Pie Place: they always have cupcakes and they sometimes have cake. Call ahead to have them set aside for you- they go fast!
Oakmont Bakery: be prepared to be here staring at all the options and salivating for hours. But also know that they have red velvet cake and red velvet cupcakes all the time. The red velvet cupcakes are known as Red Carpet cupcakes and are superbly worthy of Sugar Loving cravings.
Oakmont Bakery’s Red Carpet Cupcake on the Sugar Love Scale
Taste ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Texture ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Appearance ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Overall ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
For starters, a good red velvet cake recipe uses buttermilk or sour milk (vinegar + milk) and a small dose of baking soda and vinegar to give it a slightly tangy, sour taste. Your red velvet box mix contains sugar, flour, shortening, cocoa powder and baking soda, plus a lot of stabilizers and preservatives. It only calls for eggs, oil, and water. So no matter what, you are going to miss that delightful hint of tang that a true red velvet cake gives you. And although the box might say it's moist and delightful, it's not going to hold a candle to a true red velvet cake.
The other key piece that makes a made-from-scratch red velvet cake so much better is the proportion of cocoa powder to flour. In a box cake, you are kind of stuck with what they think tastes best, but at home, you can play a little bit more to decide how much cocoa flavor you really want in the cake.
The origin of red velvet cake is unknown, but it's been around for a while. In the 1920's, it was the signature dessert at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Legend has it that in the 1960's a patron asked for the recipe and she received it, but was billed a LARGE amount for it. She payed it, but then spread the recipe in a chain letter. Whether or not this is true, remains to be seen, but red velvet cake has since made it's way onto menus and into bakeries across the country.
My preferred red velvet cake recipe is here. It's really moist and delicious and pairs well with a buttercream icing or a cream cheese icing. It also makes a nice base for red velvet gobbs, although you need to add an extra egg and more flour for it to bind correctly.
If I've convinced you to abandon box cake mix for red velvet cake, but you still aren't in the mood to make your own, there are certainly a few places in town with a great red velvet cake.
Vanilla Pastry Studio: they don't always have the "Elvis has left the building" red velvet cupcake, so you might want to call ahead, but April Simpson-Gruver makes a killer red velvet cake.
The Pie Place: they always have cupcakes and they sometimes have cake. Call ahead to have them set aside for you- they go fast!
Oakmont Bakery: be prepared to be here staring at all the options and salivating for hours. But also know that they have red velvet cake and red velvet cupcakes all the time. The red velvet cupcakes are known as Red Carpet cupcakes and are superbly worthy of Sugar Loving cravings.
Oakmont Bakery’s Red Carpet Cupcake on the Sugar Love Scale
Taste ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Texture ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Appearance ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Overall ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
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