The Best Red Velvet Cake with Magical Cream Cheese Frosting

July 22, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 32 Comments

The Best Red Velvet Cake with Magical Cream Cheese Frosting | Korena in the Kitchen I’m going to be perfectly honest here: I don’t really get what all the fuss is about with red velvet cake. In fact, most of the time, I tend to agree with the guy who said, “it’s chocolate and red food dye, f*ck that, it’s dumb” (read that entire post – it’s hilarious!). I think that most people who say they like red velvet cake really mean that they like cream cheese frosting, and for that I can’t blame them – but the “red velvet” part just seems like a gimmick. I know it is seen as a classic in the southern USA, but the recipe for the brightly-coloured, dye-laden cake was actually developed as a crafty way for a food dye company to boost sales post-World War II. Plus, I find that the flavour of red velvet cake, which is basically a buttermilk cake made with a tiny amount of cocoa powder, doesn’t taste all that unique or special in the first place and is easily overwhelmed by cream cheese frosting. So when Whittney and Sam requested it for their wedding, I knew I’d have to do my homework to find a red velvet cake with flavour.

Red Velvet Cakes | Korena in the Kitchen

Red velvet cake-off

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Kate’s Rhubarb Upside Down Cake

May 12, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 2 Comments

Kate's Rhubarb Upside Down Cake | Korena in the Kitchen

The Canadian Food Experience Project began June 7, 2013. As we share our collective stories through our regional food experiences, we hope to bring global clarity to our Canadian culinary identity. Visit Valerie’s blog, A Canadian Foodie, on the 15th for a round-up of this month’s posts.

May’s theme for the Canadian Food Experience Project is “The Canadian Garden”, which frankly seems like a bit of a joke at this time of the year. Even living in one of the most temperate places in the country (“Cowichan” means “The Warm Land” in the local First Nations language), my garden is mostly bare dirt at the moment… save for my rhubarb plant.

Rhubarb in my garden | Korena in the Kitchen …

Kade’s Birthday Cake

May 7, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 4 Comments

Baseball Birthday Cake | Korena in the Kitchen At the end of April our friends’ son, Kade, turned three. He had a birthday party in the park after his baseball game (seriously, can you imagine anything cuter than a bunch of three-year olds trying to play baseball?!), with hotdogs on the camping stove, lots of cut up fresh fruit and veggies, and a cake made by yours truly – I offered/begged his mom, and thankfully she took me up on it! She suggested a baseball-themed cake, and because Kade is super proud and excited to be on “Team Purple” (his team wears purple t-shirts), I decided to put his jersey (or a version of it) right on the cake.

Baseball Birthday Cake | Korena in the Kitchen …

Daring Bakers: Schichttorte

January 27, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 19 Comments

The January 2014 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Francijn of “Koken in de Brouwerij“. She challenged us all to bake layered cakes in the tradition of Baumkuchen (tree cake) and Schichttorte (layered cake).

When I first read Francijn’s challenge, I thought I had no idea what I was getting in to. I’d never heard of Baumkuchen – a traditional German cake baked in layers on a rotating spit in front of a grill, whose final spiraling layers resemble the cross-sectional growth rings of a tree [see how it’s done] – but when I got to the Shichttorte – a layer cake made by baking very thin layers of batter one by one on top each other – I realized that I had in fact bookmarked a similar recipe in a cookbook, probably close to fifteen years ago! I thought the recipe was just an extremely complicated way to bake a cake, which is why I had never attempted to make it before – I had no idea it was a legitimate traditional method, and I was excited to finally give it a try.

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A Trio of Chocolate Cakes

November 5, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 9 Comments

The past few months have contained a lot of cakes – chocolate cakes, to be specific. And not for me, but for other people, which is almost more fun because I get to bake my heart out without worrying about who will eat it all. 😉

Back in August, my lovely friend Tanya asked me to make some chocolate cupcakes for a baby shower, the theme for which was the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, so I did what I could to turn the cupcakes into teacups without resorting to fiddly fondant or store-bought teacup paper liners.

I baked the Cook’s Illustrated Ultimate Chocolate Cupcakes in some pretty floral cupcake papers to simulate china cups, filled the cakes with chocolate ganache, and frosted them with the rebar chocolate cream cheese frosting.

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Daring Bakers: Pastel de Tres Leches

September 27, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 28 Comments

Inma of la Galletika was our Sept. 2013 Daring Bakers’ hostess and WOW did she bring us something decadent and delicious! Pastel de Tres Leches or Three Milk Cake, creamy yet airy, super moist but not soggy… just plain delish!

The first time I made a pastel de tres leches, or “three milks cake”, I honestly thought there was a mistake in the recipe when I read the part instructing me to pour close to three cups of milk over the beautiful sponge cake I had just taken out of the oven. But since it was a recipe from my trusted friend Martha, I took a deep breath and poured that milk over that cake… and was amazed to see it all soak in within minutes, resulting in one of the moistest, most delicious cakes I’d ever had. Consequently, I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to make another one!

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Daring Bakers: Mawa Cake

August 27, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 18 Comments

Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen was our August 2013 Daring Bakers’ hostess and she challenged us to make some amazing regional Indian desserts. The Mawa Cake, the Bolinhas de Coco cookies and the Masala cookies – beautifully spiced and delicious! 🙂

I love Indian food but I’ve never done any Indian baking, so this was an eye-opening challenge in that respect. Aparna set us a beautiful challenge to make a cake (the Mawa cake) and one of two kinds of cookies/biscuits. Never one to turn down an opportunity for cake, I made it early in the month… and then ran out of time for the second half of the challenge, ie: the cookies. 🙁

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The “Why Bother” Cake

August 19, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 23 Comments

Since I was about 7 or 8, my Mum has had food sensitivities to wheat and dairy. This was over 20 years ago, before being gluten-free and drinking soy or almond milk were “mainstream” like they are today, and food choices back then for pretty much everything were extremely limited. At some point, we started to refer to anything wheat-free and dairy-free as a “why bother?” because most often, without both wheat and dairy, whatever you were eating was barely worth it – especially when it came to dessert.

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Daring Bakers: Prinsesstårta

May 27, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 63 Comments

Korena of Korena in the Kitchen was our May Daring Bakers’ host and she delighted us with this beautiful Swedish Prinsesstårta!

Yup, I was the Daring Bakers host this month, and I can’t tell you how much fun I had! I was pretty nervous putting a recipe out there for hundreds of people to bake – what if it didn’t work? what if they thought it tasted awful? – but the feedback was pretty positive and the recipe was a success, save the pastry cream, which curdled for some people (I’m so sorry, those people!). A big humungous THANK YOU to all the Daring Bakers who baked along with me this month, and please PLEASE check out the Daring Bakers blogroll to see this month’s seriously amazing results – so many delicious variations and flavour combinations and beautifully decorated cakes! 🙂

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Cream Cheese Swiss Meringue Buttercream Frosting, Take 2: Success!

March 28, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 86 Comments

Almost two years ago, I made a wedding cake for my good friend and frosted it with cream cheese Swiss meringue buttercream. The cake turned out great, but the frosting was another story. Turns out that cream cheese doesn’t work so well as a replacement for butter, which I realized after having made two giant batches of frosting, posting about it, and then having it go all weird and curdled when I actually tried to frost the cake with it. It was so unsuccessful that I wouldn’t recommend the recipe to anyone, but it is obviously a topic of interest to many because that post generates a lot of traffic for my blog….