Kitchen Experiment: "White Velvet" Cake

One of my personal favourite recipes on this blog is the red velvet cake I made back in 2017 when living in Roscommon with my fiancé. It's my go to recipe for chocolate cake, but normally when I want a plain cake I use my normal sponge recipe or the super fluffy sponge I used in the Japanese shortcake. So, I wondered: can I use the red velvet recipe for plain cake?

From my superficial research on Pinterest (which, to be fair, is all the research I have time for these days) American bakers make something called white cake, which essentially has the same constituent parts as the red velvet (without the cocoa and red colouring, obviously) but added together slightly differently. The main difference is that white cake uses only egg whites.

I tried making this cake the American way without egg yolks, but it always turned out too gummy. I think one needs the emulsifying nature of yolks to keep everything together. So, this is essentially the same as my red velvet recipe, only the butter is replaced entirely with oil and the egg whites are whipped separately for lots of volume.

I made a small rectangular cake by whipping 1 egg white with 1½ ounces (40 grammes) of caster sugar to medium peaks. In another jug, I mixed another 1½ ounces (40 grammes) of caster sugar with the egg yolk until smooth, then mixed in 2 ounces (55 grammes) sunflower oil, 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence, and a few drops of almond essence until evenly blended. I folded the yolk mixture into the white mixture gently until fully mixed. I then alternately added 3 ounces (85 grammes) of sifted white flour and raising agents with 2 fluid ounces (55 millilitres) of buttermilk. For this amount of cake, I added ¼ teaspoon baking powder, ⅓ teaspoon baking soda, and ¼ teaspoon of fine salt. I then baked it in a 180C oven for 20 minutes.

After baking and cooling, I filled and iced the cakes with the same kind of cooked milk frosting as the red velvet cake. This time, however, I made it by cooking half a pint of milk, 5 teaspoons of cornflour, and 8 ounces of sugar into a custard. I then whipped the custard with 8 ounces of unsalted butter. Cooking the sugar into the custard made for a much nicer mouthfeel. I only used half of this amount of icing for this small cake, before packing the sides with slivered almonds.

Now, was this cake any fluffier than just using the regular recipe and swapping out the cocoa and food colouring? No. Even though this was paler than a normal vanilla butter cake, I have other recipes that would be just as good for making a pale, fluffy sponge.

Happy St. Valentine's Day! Strawberry Creme Hearts

Happy St Valentine's Day! Want a cute but simple treat for your valentine? Or something sweet to nibble on after dinner? Well here are some super cute strawberry creme hearts!

I remember making peppermint cremes as a kid and never having much success: the traditional recipe is a pound of sugar with an egg white and maybe a little golden syrup and Bob's your uncle, a soft malleable fondant that can be shaped into whatever you like (usually little balls pressed on with a fork). However, it never turned out so simply. The fondant was either too sticky, or too dry, and had no dimension to it other than unrelenting sweetness.

For me, the missing ingredient was always a little bit of fat to keep everything held together and to break up the sugariness. Also the vagueness of "one egg white" meant you could only make loads of it or none at all.

I've developed a simple recipe that uses only three base ingredients: icing sugar, vegetable shortening, and syrup. Not a single egg white in sight! I use glucose syrup, but white corn syrup is a perfect substitute.

INGREDIMENTS

1 tablespoon (15 grammes) white vegetable shortening

1 ounce (30 grammes) glucose syrup, or white corn syrup

4 ounces (115 grammes) sifted icing sugar

A few drops of cold water, for mixing

Salt for seasoning

Strawberry essence, to taste

Pink food colouring

Cornflour, for dusting

METHOD

• In a mixing bowl, mix the vegetable shortening and glucose syrup until creamy. 
• Stir in the icing sugar, then add in water drop by drop until you have a nice dough. It should be stiff, but not dry. 
• Knead in your flavour essences, colouring, and salt until it tastes and looks exactly how you like. You'll be surprised by how much salt you need to season it.
• Dusting your work surface with a little cornflour, you can either roll out and cut shapes like I did, or you could model it like clay.
• Allow the sweets to set for at least 2 hours, ideally 8 hours.