Stress Baking : Fresh Strawberry Cream Cheese Bread

One of three things are typically going to happen when I am stressed. Cooking, baking, or cleaning. Fun? Not really. But, I need some kind of tangible productive activity to be happening. I need to see progress being made! As much as I'd like to think my brain will turn off if I indulge it in Real Housewives or some other equally mind numbing television, it's still working in the background. Last night's activity was baking.
I had some strawberries that needed to be used, and stumbled upon this Fresh Strawberry Cream Cheese Bread from My Baking Addiction's blog.
The recipe was super easy to put together. Was able to watch part of The King's Speech while the cream cheese and butter were softening, and then easily mixed it together to throw in the oven. I used all the strawberries I had - I believe it was a 1.5 pints. The recipe seemed really agreeable to this.
The only difficult thing was gauging when the bread was ready to come out. I started checking around 50 minutes and left it in for about 14 minutes longer. I suspect the extra strawberries had to do with this.
The bread turned out extra moist and just sweet enough with lots of strawberries!

Two Pound Strawberry Cake!

I've never made a strawberry cake before, so I figured the first go is only proper if from scratch and with real strawberries! The few searches online mostly yielded recipes using a white cake box mix, and I finally stumbled upon one that was worthwhile.

Luckily, Costco had 2 lb containers of strawberries in a somewhat off-season? Thank you, Costco!

To process the strawberries so that they wouldn't be completely watery, and therefore ruin the recipe, I first cut off the tops of the strawberries and then squished them through an egg slicer. From there they went into a food processor and were pulsed until they were processed just right without a bunch of strawberry juice in the bottom.

One of the comments in the reviews for the recipe noted separating the egg yolks and the egg whites, decreased sugar, and increased the baking powder to yield a more fluffy cake. It all sounded good to me, so that's exactly what I did. Mixed the yolks with two tbsps of water, added the mixture with the butter/sugar/vanilla bowl. Once you got to mixing the flour bowl, sugar bowl, and strawberry puree, the batter became very thick. The final bit was to beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and then fold it into the batter. This seemed to lighten it up as far as mixing goes. In two 8 inch rounds, I set the timer for 20 minutes and babysat it after that. It smelled nice as it was baking, but we'll have to see how the cake fares later.

The frosting was another experiment of sorts. Cream cheese frosting seems to be the favorite as of late, so since I still had an abundance of strawberries left from my 2 lb Costco buy, I figured why not? Used the same technique with the squishing of strawberries with the egg slicer and then threw it into the food processor. This time I was paranoid about extra moisture/strawberry juice, but I didn't want my frosting to be chunky. So I pureed it almost to a pulp, then strained the liquid out. This seemed to work very well.

My mistake while making the frosting is a simple one. Let your cream cheese and butter soften all the way!! Otherwise you'll end up with chunks of cream cheese and it's very hard for them to be worked out afterwards. I never really knew, cared, or understood this until a few years ago. Seeing the curds in my frosting today reminded me of my early cheesecakes where it was very curdy and I thought I was just a horrible cheesecake baker. Turns out I was just impatient! :) So, while there are a few chunks in the frosting, the strawberries did well in masking it, at least I hope so!

Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting

2 8oz boxes of cream cheese
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 cup processed/strained strawberries
Powdered sugar to your liking - I think mine today was roughly 2 1/2 cups?

Take out cream cheese and butter and leave out on counter to soften. This is very important!
In a stand mixer with paddle attachment, mix together cream cheese and butter.
Add strawberries.
Start adding powdered sugar, slowly, to liking.

Frosts a 2 layer 8 inch cake, plus some to spare!

After the cake and the frosting was made, I still had some strawberries left over. My original vision was to egg slice the strawberries and put them in between the layers. I decided against this, and ended up halving the remaining strawberries and decorating the cake with them.

We'll see if this cake makes the cut...my fingers are crossed! With two pounds of strawberries in it, how could it be wrong?

What the eff is Red Velvet anyways?

Seems like Red Velvet flavored anything is all the rage these days. I know I got sucked into it when Coffee Bean Tea Leaf featured their Red Velvet Cocoa. I couldn't explain the flavor to you other than tasting really sugary and artificial, but I was hooked. Leaving Austin and visiting Tucson, where there are no Coffee Beans, I was having Red Velvet Cocoa withdrawals. The dessert hangout, Something Sweet, had a red velvet cake to offer...and even in shake form (they make a shake combining the cake with ice cream and milk, or something to that effect). I went with the plain ole cake.

Even with the cake, I can't tell you what it actually tastes like. Most red velvet cake I've experienced has been dense, dry, and tasting of red food coloring. I think I keep trying it everywhere in some sort of search for the Holy Grail of Red Velvet. Somewhere out there has to be the most delicious Red Velvet Cake that will extinguish any thought of this cake being anything but delightful!

So, when a friend's birthday party came up and the request was for red velvet cake, I thought it was fantastic! Immediately, I started looking up recipes online. I couldn't find one that didn't have at least 2 tbsp of red food coloring, and I didn't want that taste. Finally, I remembered I had a cupcake book, Cupcakes by Shelly Kaldunski, that was gifted to me from Mrs. B, and I wanted to try the Red Velvet Cupcake recipe that it had.
Her description of Red Velvet Cupcakes is as follows:

"The origins of red velvet cake are a little hazy, but it's widely recognized as a Southern creation. The cupcake version of the extra-mild chocolate cake is topped with a cream cheese frosting that's laced with buttered pecans, a decidedly Southern ingredient."

Ok, so the flavor is supposed to be extra-mild chocolate? I suppose I could buy that, seeing that cocoa is one of the ingredients.

As far as the color, red food coloring is added, although in this particular recipe it didn't have me adding two bottles of red food coloring - Thank Goodness! According to some article on the internet (so surely, it must be true right? ;-) ), the red colored cakes were due to a chemical reaction between unprocessed cocoa and the acid in the sour milk. I think if I were to have left out the red food coloring, the cakes would have come out a lighter chocolate color.

Anyhow, the recipe was fairly easy to put together, three bowls of ingredients, and by the power of the mixer, the batter was formed. I was a little put off by the batter, as it seemed awfully thick. Loaded up the cupcake liners, and to my dismay, the recipe that claimed to make 12 cupcakes only yielded 8. Not a problem, doubled the recipe and finished off my cupcakes.

Taking them out of the pan to put on the cooling rack, these things felt like bricks. Very dense. My panic mode ensued. What else could I do? Try another recipe and make more cupcakes? Run to Hey Cupcake and buy a dozen? Then the words, or word, of my Grandmother hit me..."whatever!"

The Cream Cheese Frosting recipe came from the same book, and it was an absolute hit!
The cakes did come out a little dense, but they did have a nice "extra-mild" chocolate flavor. The color was more of a rosy pink rather than the traditional bleeding red. Overall, it was an ok recipe...and our birthday guests of honor seemed happy.

Now that I have a small idea of what Red Velvet is...I might have to experiment more to find the damn Holy Grail of Red Velvet.