RED VELVET TAKE TWO-
PLUS A MERINGUE EMERGENCY

Killing two birds with one stone. I made these for two birthdays. My husband's boss and one of my co-workers. The request was Red velvet with meringue frosting (my husband's favorite -meringue frosting).
(Side Note: Wait a minute meringue frosting has been my hubby's favorite since childhood? He tells me just NOW that his mom would make it for cakes all the time growing up and it was and is his fav. OK, and I am just now making this frosting for the first time after 5 years of being married to him. How did I not know this and why haven't I made his favorite frosting earlier, me being a baking and cooking enthusiast. Don't you make the favorites of the one's you love first before venturing out into new things? Hummm things to think about. In 20 years of making say... green beans for dinner, will he finally tell me that he HATES greenbeans. My whole world may be shattered. Not sure why I have come across the brilliance of meringue frosting with such tardiness. This is no one's fault, I am simply just observing and pointing out. Anyway, back to more important matters of life...)

Uh oh this is going to be another long one. Sorry.

Here's the thing, Before making the birthday cupcakes I had only made meringue frosting once before, besides these meringue cookies I made once, Miss Scarlet and those were eaten right away after making. I had no idea how this meringue frosting was going to hold up over night. I had no experience with meringue frosting but I wanted to use it because for (1) I had a request for it, (2) cream cheese frosting was too plain, (3) meringue was new to me, I needed to get out my creative antsyness out and (4) It just looks really cool and I wanted to do something different and elegant. There are so many things you can do with meringue.
(The specks in the frosting are the inside of a vanilla bean)

In order to find out if I could really do this frosting and keep it overnight I searched the web and baking blogs to find info on meringue frosting-Didn't find what I was looking for. I decided to e-mail Stef at Cupcake Project and pick her super cupcake genius-brain about meringue(which happens to not be her favorite frosting anyway. She gave me wonderful advice to do a chocolate cream cheese frosting which looked awesome. I was about to do that instead when a little voice in my head said to me "you gotta' do meringue!". So, I posted a bulletin on Chow.com to see if anyone could answer my question there. They gave me lots of advice and different other frosting recipes that would be good with red velvet like a Southern Custard Buttercream which was the original frosting to go on RVC in the 40's and 50's before cream cheese frosting came along later. They told me that Italian Meringue frosting is the most stable of them all and to not store it in the fridge.
I still was not satisfied and secure that meringue frosting would hold out and be alright overnight. At the last minute, I e-mailed Cheryl at Cupcakecake Bakeshop (another super-baker genius). It was her recipe I was planning to use anyway so I should have just e-mailed her before but I was trying not to not bug anyone by e-mailing.

Anyway, here's the important part, she told me that the frosting could be left out-non refrigerated and loosely covered once the cupcakes were frosted. In most cases if you are making cupcakes the night before, you want to make the cupcake and frosting, store separately and frost in the morning or next day. NOT IN THIS CASE. Because if you make meringue frosting (at least this specific recipe) and leave it in it's bowl overnight, it will be wrecked, the meringue will have a top foam with all this liquid at the bottom and will be unusable.

My life was saved. I made the meringue frosting, frosted the cupcakes and was toasting them with my culinary torch when I ran out of butane. It was too late to go get some. I mean, can you believe it? part of the reason I went through the hassle of getting the meringue info and going through the hassle of making the meringue is so I could do toasty things with it. Well, there was a solution, but it's not as fun. You can toast meringue in the broiler for less than a minute and it does the trick.
P.S. You can also caramelize the sugar for our creme brulee in the broiler if you don't have a culinary torch.

I baked mini cupcakes with a strawberry in the middle. The regular cupcakes I filled with chocolate filling and of course had the meringue frosting on top.
Everyone like them especially with the chocolate filling.
THE END!

So, here is my Ice Cream Cupcake entry for the May 2008 Cupcake Challenge that CupcakeProject and Scoopalicious put on. YAY! I did it. :)

See the ice cream cupcake roundup entries here :)

Miss Scarlet:Red Velvet Cupcake, Creme Brulee Ice cream, Meringue Frosting and Blood Orange.

This WAS a challenge and during this process I grew to be such a more profound and deep cupcake baker. :) Hahahaha. I am kidding but, I really did learn a lot and have more confidence in myself because I actually pulled this off without stress or strife.

I decided to make a red velvet cupcake since I have been wanting to make them for a long time. This was my first time making red velvet cake and I had a collection of different recipes but, I decided that Vanilla Garlics's Red Velvet recipe would be most trust worthy..... Which it was :). Although I used 2 tablespoons powdered red dye instead because that's all I had. The cake was amazingly velvety.

The First batch overflowed a little (always test a new cake recipe 1st that you have never made before to see how it's going to behave before you bake all the batter :)) It worked out though, I made a little side project with the "mess-ups"and some fresh farmers market strawberries. Red Velvet cupcake with a strawberry cream cheese topping. The strawberries were an amazingly yummy match for the red velvet cake.

For the ice cream I made creme brulee Ice cream. I am not sure if my way was the actual way but it worked for me. The hard part is not wanting to eat the creme brulee before putting it in the ice cream maker.

This was my second time making creme brulee ice cream-it's rich but sooo good with a nice light flavor not too sweet at all. First you must make creme brulee.......

Creme Brulee:

1/2 vanilla
2 cups heavy cream
3 egg yolks
Pinch of salt
1/4 cup sugar

Preheat an oven to 300°

Boil a pot of water to have on hand

Slice the vanilla bean lengthwise down the middle and scrape the seeds into a 2-quart saucepan Add the heavy cream and whisk to mix vanilla beans

Let simmer over medium-low heat until bubbles form around the edges and steam rises

Remove the saucepan from the heat and let steep for 10 minutes

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, salt and the 1/4 cup sugar until smooth

Gradually add the cream to the egg mixture and mix well with whisk

Pour the custard through a fine-mesh sieve set over a bowl

Divide the custard among ramekins and place the ramekins in a baking pan lined with a kitchen towel. Place on oven wrack that has been pulled out a little and then slowly add boiling water to fill the pan halfway up the sides of the ramekins.

Cover the pan loosely with aluminum foil

Bake until the custard is just set around the edges about 30-40 minutes

Place ramekins on a cooling rack and let cool to room temperature.

Cover with plastic wrap and chill at least 5 hours.

(if you are not making ice cream you sprinkle about 1 tablespoon granulated sugar on top of the chilled custard and caramelize the sugar on top with a culinary torch or the oven broiler. Eat with fresh berries or fruit. YUM!)

Moving on......

Once chilled, I used a spoon to scoop all the custard into my ice cream maker and let churn for 15 minutes.

Then I Poured the ice cream into the same rubber cupcake forms I baked my cupcakes in. Then placed in freezer until set 2-3 hours.

For the Frosting...I made meringue frosting from Cupcake Bakeshop
for a small batch:
3 egg whites
1/2 cup of sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine egg whites and sugar into a mixing bowl over a hot water bath.
Whisk until sugar is dissolved (110 degrees/a few minutes)
Take bowl off bath and beat 10 minutes
Add your flavor (don't add too much liquid)
Beat for another 10 minutes until stiff peaks and glossy
Scoop onto cupcake and sculpt with clean fingers
Lightly brown with culinary torch

It was my first time making meringue frosting and during the process I thought, BOY THIS IS A PAIN!!! But I stuck it out. From start to finish it took me about 35 -45 minutes. Once done, IT WAS WELL WORTH IT THE PAIN. You can shape it in such cool ways and toast it. It sooo much fun and it tastes really good. Really sweet but, good.

Garnishes I used: I happened to have a blood orange also from my farmers market trip earlier in the week. So I cut it into slices for a topper. As well as some experimental caramelized sugar I made with my culinary torch.

So that's it. I am not sure I would take a challenge on every month but, doing these challenges really helps you grow and learn new things. Hehe.

The END!