A rose red velvet cake by any other name
So our last attempt was to try the same recipe with the steps from the Red Rose Velvet cake recipe. We had one problem due to the fact that it does on use egg yolls or vinegar. We decided to deal with that by separating the eggs and adding the yolks to the butter mixture and adding the vinegar into the buttermilk.
What we changed
Nothing except the steps. We kept to the recipe and so rather than measuring the flour by weight we used 2 1/3 cup flour. However this time our home make buttermilk was a bit more sour.
What we did
We sifted the flour because her recipe stated sifted flour. Then we add the baking soda, baking powder and cocoa to the bowl and stirred it with a whisk.
We creamed the butter which really just softened it more. It did not get fluffy like it does when you cream it with sugar. We then added the egg yolks in.
We whisked the eggs white with the red food coloring which did not seem to do much. Normally egg whites goes white and fluffy when you whisk them. There was some frothing but that was all. This was a messy step.
We added the buttermilk+vinegar plus the flour mix to the bowl and beat it for the allotted time.
Then it was time to add the egg white mix in two parts. Unfortunately by this time the whites and food coloring has separated out so that the first part added was basically all egg white. The second part seemed all coloring.
All up there was only 1 minute spent mixing the food coloring into the batter.
This time we made a variety of sizes: some 1.2 oz, some 1.5 oz and some mini cupcakes @ 0.5 oz.
What we found
This batter did not seem as fluffy as the first.
This time we decided to weigh the batter. First we weighed the mixing bowl which was 30 oz. Then we weighed the batter in the bowl and took off 30 oz. We had 38.2 oz of batter. Based on that we could make 30 * 1.2 oz cup cakes or 24 @ 1.5 oz with some left over or 75 mini’s.
All cup cakes came out OK.
We noticed that there were dark streaks on the top of a lot of the cakes that went into the cake so were not only on the top. It seemed to be related to inadequate mixing.
The 1.2 oz still seemed too full again and so we could try just 1 oz. But we now think maybe the quality of the papers is not good and might try the silver ones you can get which seem sturdier.
The minis looked quite good.
But again the 1.5 oz in the IKEA cups looked best.
We all thought they seemed fluffier but again it might have been perception since they all seemed the same height and the same volume of batter was used in each one.
Conclusion
We don’t think changing the steps made any real difference. And we kind of wish we took the cake mix approach and just added the dry things to the wet.
What next?
We could use the steps from yet another recipe we found that handles the food coloring a little differently to see if that makes a difference or we could just plonk it all in a bowl and mix it all up as one step.
But, bottom line is that we suspect changing ingredients has more impact than the steps and we want to explore the use of beet powder to get away from the chemical red food coloring.
However sadly here our science project ends but for us and this website it is only the beginning …
