CHOCOLATE VELVET CAKE

I like red velvet cake. I do. I love the hint of sourness, the smooth fluffy chocolatey cake, and of course the cream cheese icing. Ah, heaven! But sometimes I’m a bit icky with food coloring. For the past year, I vow to to be au naturale with my product. That means no preservatives (never use it anyway), fresh ingredients (mandatory!), and of course very little to none of food coloring (that means bye bye tye die muffin & cake in my menu list). The only time I use food coloring is for coloring fondant or butter cream for a themed cake, but never the cake batter.

It’s been hard, since the cake trend here in Jakarta right now is still Red Velvet and now adding the Rainbow cake. I get soooo many request of RV & rainbow, but I stick to my vow, and refuse the requests. I know, maybe I’m just stupid for rejecting orders, which means money. But I stand still to my decision, au naturale it is!

Back to red velvet, reading the recipe, a realization came (d-uh), I can still have the velvety taste without using the coloring. Red velvet without the red, well.. It’s basically just chocolate cake. Chocolate Velvet cake. Yay!

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HAPPY PI DAY !

Today is March 14, jut a regular day to most of us, but for math geeks, it’s a special day to commemorate the number 3.14. Yup, it’s Pi day! I didn’t even know such day existed, but when Mr. Geek contacted me and asked if I could make cupcakes on the 14th with Pi symbol and the number 3,14, i was like, oooh.. there is such day.

So, early morning March 14, I made a batch of vanilla cupcakes, peanut butter frosting, and chocolate butter cream for his cupcakes. Just a simple set, with blue & pink butter cream decoration only.

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SOFT BAKED COOKIES

I have a very special relationship with chocolate chip cookies. My first love was Famous Amos double Chocolate Chip cookies. Those ugly black irregular buttons taste like heaven to me. When I grew older, I also love soft baked & chewy cookies, like Mrs. Fields. My journey of finding the recipe for both type of cookies mostly ends unsuccessful. Every recipe I found that says something like, “famous amos cookies clone” or “Mrs. Fields secret recipe!” turned out to be rubbish. None of them were good.

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