I am not ashamed.
It is my favorite day of the year. Not because I am a hopeless romantic (though perhaps I am).
Valentine's Day is wonderful for many reasons--flowers! hearts! Love! (Okay, maybe I am a bit of a romantic.) But it is most wonderful, aside from the affection I get to lavish on my friends and family, for all the marvelous food and luscious treats. Truffles--both the mushrooms and the chocolates--make an appearance, as do less rarified ingredients, like the very first asparagus of the season and handmade tagliatelle.
But really, it's all about the desserts. Unrepentantly dense, dark, flourless chocolate cake. Smooth, satisfyingly tangy lemon tart. But what says Valentine's Day more than Red Velvet Cake?
It is perhaps a bit played out by now, with the endless replays of Sex and the City on cable, but I am from the South, where red velvet cake was just another dessert in the stunningly long repertoire of my grandmother's regular baking rotation, along with things like coconut cream cake, buttermilk pie, apple buckle, blueberry whim-wham, and syllabub. But for Valentine's Day, she always made me Red Velvet Cake.
Now I'm a grown-up, and frankly appalled at the thought of all the red dye I must have eaten as a child. I had always thought that the cake was red from a chemical reaction between the dutch process cocoa powder and the baking soda used to leaven it. Once upon a time, that may have been true, and that is why there is a subcategory of chocolate cakes with names like "Devil's Food," but the color was vague at best, and with the advent of commercial food coloring, the vibrantly hued cakes of my childhood were possible.
I would be happy with something less brilliantly scarlet than that--some of the recipes I looked at called for 2 ounces of red food coloring for a single 8-inch cake!, but I would like to serve something that was recognizably Red Velvet.
After much thought, and quite a bit of internet searching, I stumbled across beets. (That, and a package of them in my vegetable drawer that was looking lonely.) Further research on some other people's experiments with beets and reading through some ancient cookbooks, where sweet vegetables like beets and tomatoes make appearances in desserts with some regularity, yielded this recipe for red velvet cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting.
Just in time for the best day of the year.
*One Caveat: This recipe relies on the interplay of pH levels to keep the red color of the beets bright and lively through the cooking process. I started with buttermilk and the juice of a whole lemon, and moved on to sour cream and half a lemon with some cider vinegar, which is what worked best for me and my kitchen. If it doesn't work for you, please feel free to play with the acid levels--find what works! And then tell me!
Recipe:
Cupcakes
1/2 can cooked beets or 1/2 pack cooked beets from one of those cryopacks in the veggie section (good stuff, those. great for salads.)
2 Tablespoons sushi vinegar
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 Tablespoons cocoa powder (NOT Dutch process)
pinch salt
1 egg
1/2 cup sour cream
Preheat oven to 375 degrees with rack in the middle of the oven
1. Prepare a 12 cup muffin tin with cupcake casings or baker's joy.
2. In a food processor, blitz beets, lemon juice and vinegar until a very smooth purée forms, scraping down the sides of the bowl occasionally with a spatula.
3. Add sugar, butter and vanilla and blend until smooth. Add dry ingredients. Blend until smooth. Add eggs and sour cream and blend until just combined.
4. Divide evenly among 12 cups and bake approximately 20-25 minutes until well risen and set--a cake tester (or toothpick) comes out clean, with no batter or crumbs.
Vanilla Buttercream
2 egg whites
1/2 cup water
2/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 sticks butter, cut into small pieces
special equipment: candy thermometer, electric mixer with a whip attachment
1. In a small saucepan over medium heat, put water and sugar to boil.
2. While sugar heat, beat egg whites in an electric mixer until stiff peaks form. By this time, the sugar should be boiling merrily and be about 240 degrees. Add to the egg whites and beat on high speed until the metal bowl is cool to the touch, between 5 and 10 minutes.
3. Add butter gradually. Don't worry if the mixture looks as if it is beginning to curdle, keep with it. It will eventually return to creamy gorgeousness. Add vanilla and beat to combine.
Makes enough to ice a dozen cupcakes plus plenty to snarf on.
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