Red Velvet Cookies

Packages of Red Velvet Cookies. These sold quickly at a recent sale to benefit Hunger Ministries at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. A cute way to package them is to place the cookies in cupcake papers and slide them inside self-sealing cellophane bags. I used paper punches to make the homemade tags.

These Red Velvet Sandwich Cookies are sure to please all your sweeties this Valentine's Day and there's still plenty of time to make them.

The cookie is a twist on my favorite tried and true recipe for Chocolate Espresso Sandwich Cookies that's from Julie Richardson of Baker & Spice. I just swapped red food coloring for the espresso in the dough, cut heart shapes, and after baking filled them with cream cheese icing. They are easy to make and so delicious.  Here's the recipe:

Red Velvet Sandwich Cookies
(makes about 4 dozen 2-inch sandwiches)

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups unsalted butter
1 tablespoon vanilla
2 eggs
1 1/3 cups Dutch process Cocoa, sifted
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 oz red food coloring
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

Cream together the butter and sugar on medium-high speed for 5 minutes or until light, scraping down the bowl occasionally as needed.

Add the vanilla and the eggs, one at a time, blending lightly between additions. Add the red food coloring, make sure to mix this in on low so that there's no splattering!

Add the cocoa on low speed until combined.

Blend the flour, and salt and add to the butter mixture until just combined.Wrap the dough and let it chill for at least 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

After chilling, the dough might need to warm at room temperature for a bit so that it can be easily rolled.

Roll the dough on a lightly floured work area to about 1/4 inch thick. Cut the dough into desired shapes, I like to use a 1.5-inch heart cutter and place on parchment lined cookie sheets. Bake for about 6 minutes or until the cookies are no longer shiny but still soft in the middle.

Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack and allow them to cool completely before filling them with the cream cheese filling.

Adding the cream cheese filling to the cookies.

Cream Cheese Filling

2/3 cup powdered sugar

8 oz. (1 package) cream cheese 

1/4 cup softened butter

1 teaspoons vanilla

Whip cream cheese and butter thoroughly. Add the vanilla then the powdered sugar, a little at a time and whip until smooth.

Valentine Treat Preview

I just finished packaging my last batch of cookies for tomorrow's Valentine Sweet Sale at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral and am happy to say everything is looking great and I'm anxious to start selling and raising funds for Hunger Ministries. 

Here are a few pictures from a busy week preparing for the sale and a few previews of what will be for sale tomorrow from 9 a.m. to noon in Kempton Hall at the church (147 NW 19th Ave, Portland Oregon). I hope to see you there!

I dedicated Thursday and Friday to cookie baking and decorating. These brushed embroidery cookies were the first design I tackled.

I also had to include a heart design. I used a heart cookie cutter to make an impression in the cookies before baking. The first step in decorating these was to paint the heart with pink royal icing.

These cookies demonstrate the three steps to decorating the heart cookies.

Finished cookies that just need to dry before packaging.

Of course I also had to make some French Macarons. I thought cherry would be a good choice for Valentine's Day.

I filled the macarons with a Morello cherry buttercream.

I also made some salted caramel macarons because they are always well received and I thought they would look nice packaged alongside the  cherry macarons.

The final touch in packaging the macarons was a homemade tag and some butcher's twine.

Saturday morning it was truffle packaging time. Here I am filling truffle boxes with Dave who with his wife Cheryl made all of the truffles. Our friends Cindy and Terri also came by to help with the packaging.

Each five-piece box contains three dark and two milk chocolate truffles.

The final touch to the truffle boxes was adding a pretty bow and a paper heart. Terri and Cindy tied all of the ribbons and did a wonderful job. I love the way the boxes turned out and I have my friends to thank. If the bow tying was all up to me, I'd still be struggling — it's definitely not my talent.  But like Terri said today, "many hands make light work." It was a team effort and I'm grateful.

Valentine Sweet Sale

These mini Valentine cookies will be for sale!

It's time again for the Valentine Sweet Sale to benefit Trinity Episcopal Cathedral's Food Ministries which supports The Wednesday Community Meal. The annual sale is one of Food Ministries' largest fundraisers but last year's sale sadly had to be cancelled because of icy winter weather. We're hoping to make up for it this year and sell out.

I've been busy making cookies and my friends and cohorts Cheryl and Dave Richardson have been busy making Belgian chocolate truffles. All of the sweets will be beautifully packaged and ready to give to your loved ones.

Here are the details:

Valentine Sweet Sale to Benefit Food Ministries
Sunday February 8, 9 a.m. to noon in Kempton Hall at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral (147 NW 19th Avenue, Portland, Oregon). Buy Belgian chocolate truffles and cookies for all your loved ones and at the same time support Trinity’s Food Ministries. The sweets are handmade by chocolatiers and bakers from The Wednesday Community Meal and will be beautifully packaged and ready to give.

Happy To Be Back

I got Carol to pose for a quick picture at the kitchen window today.  She is a longtime regular volunteer who works nonstop in the dining room delivering food to the guests.

It felt so good to see my friends at The Wednesday Community Meal after two weeks of being away. I know this might sound sappy because it was just two weeks, but I really missed them. Volunteering at the meal is something I look forward to each week and to me it's much more than just about feeding those in need. It's also about creating a community where everyone is welcome and everyone feels comfortable and safe.

The main entree today was spaghetti and meatballs and our guests seemed very pleased. The pasta and sauce for the spaghetti came from The Oregon Food Bank and the ground beef we used to make the meatballs was donated by Lift Urban Portland.

Today's entree.

Of course we also served hot soup, salad and dessert. The latter was pudding topped with crushed cookies which is always popular. There's just something very soothing about a cup of pudding.

Cups of butterscotch and chocolate pudding ready to served.

We served 233 meals today.

My Sweet NYC Experiences

Eleanor and I on top of the Empire State Building.

Okay, I admit it. I eat a lot when I travel because in addition to seeing new things, I want to taste new things, especially sweet things.

My recent trip to New York with my family was lots of fun and I tasted quite a few sweet treats that I won't forget and am just going to have to try to recreate.

It was nice having my husband and daughter with me so that together we could taste a lot without over-indulging. Each day, we'd splurge on a sweet treat and split it three ways, enjoying it slowly together and then taking turns rating it and giving it a thorough review. There's no doubt about it, we take our sweets very seriously, but doing it this way is also lots of fun and gets us interacting.


In order, here is my list of the best sweets we tried:

Cereal Milk Soft Serve from Momofuku Milk Bar

Cereal Milk Soft Serve

Hands down, my favorite was Cereal Milk Soft Serve from Momofuku Milk Bar which has multiple locations throughout the city. The company has trademarked the process of making Cereal Milk so darn it, I don't know if I'll ever be able to taste it anywhere else.

Cereal Milk is lightly sweet with a hint of a cereal taste just like the milk in the bottom of your cereal bowl. I'm pretty sure the cereal they use to make it is cornflakes but that wasn't divulged. You can buy Cereal Milk and Pretzel Milk in a bottle to drink straight up or you can have the Cereal Milk Soft Serve and that's what I went absolutely bonkers for. It's sooo good! It's not too sweet and the best part is you get to eat it with a wooden spoon which in my opinion always makes a frozen treat taste better.

Corn Cookie from Momofuku Milk Bar

We noticed that just about every patron at Momofuku Milk Bar ordered a Corn Cookie and that's why we had to try one too.

My next favorite treat also came from Momofuku Milk Bar and that was the Corn Cookie and unlike Cereal Milk, the recipe can be found online and in the cookbook "Momofuku Milk Bar" by Christina Tosi. The Corn Cookie was, like the Cereal Milk Soft Serve, sweetened just right.

The best way for me to describe the Corn Cookie is to say it's dense, chewy, very corny and satisfying. It's a simple looking cookie with complex flavors and unlike any cookie I've ever tasted. There is one conundrum about Tosi's recipe though, it calls for freeze-dried corn powder which I can only imagine is hard to find if you don't live in NYC.  Momofuku Milk Bar sells it at its locations.

Rosemary Olive Oil Macaron from Macaron Parlor

Macarons from Macaron Parlor. Clockwise from top left: Rosemary Olive Oil, Party Time, Earl Gray and Corn — I'm thinking corn might be the next hot dessert flavor!

Then there was the Rosemary Olive Oil Macaron from Macaron Parlor. It wasn't a savory macaron but a sweet one filled with a rosemary scented olive oil ganache. It was different but divine. My husband and daughter's faces just lit up after one taste because they didn't know what to expect and were very pleasantly surprised. This is one I'm going to have to recreate for sure.


Banana Caramel Macaron from Financier

A giant Banana Caramel Macaron from Financier.

Another top-notch macaron we tasted came from Financier which lucky for us had a shop just a few blocks from where we were staying. Their macarons got my attention right away because of their size, they are at least 3.5 inches in diameter, and as a macaron baker this impressed me because they were still cooked evenly with a perfect texture — crunchy on the outside and dense and chewy on the inside. The larger the macaron, the more difficult it is to get the texture right and I have no idea how they did it.  Our choice at Financier was a Banana Caramel Macaron which fortunately was made with real bananas and not artificial flavoring. It was delicious.


Flourless Chocolate Cake from Magnolia Bakery

Flourless Chocolate Cake from Magnolia Bakery

A final treat that I have to mention is the Flourless Chocolate Cake from Magnolia Bakery. It was soft, light, dense and chewy all at once and very very chocolaty. "Um, now this is good," declared Eleanor, my chocoholic daughter, after her first bite.  One $4 cake, split three ways, was completely satisfying and now I know why the clerk at the shop said "Now that's a good choice" when I said I was buying one dessert to share.

Other food related highlights from our trip:

My husband kindly helped us navigate our way via Subway to N.Y. Cake at 56 West 22nd Street. It was worth seeing but I have to say I found it overwhelming and overpriced. The space is tight due to the jam packed shelves and there weren't any deals — just a large selection. I saw some Valentine cupcake liners that I liked but they were $25 for 500 — yikes! that's .20 each. Even with shipping, the deals are better online. Well, now I know.

While walking in the West Village I saw this magnificant bakery with a crazy long line and people pressed up to the large picture window outside just watching and taking pictures. I was immediately intrigued and snapped this picture from the outside through the window. The really strange part is that there was no signage indicating the name of the bakery. What was this place?!

Then I saw there was something on the boxes they were packing and snapped a pic and had my eagle-eyed daughter read it. It said Aux Merveilleux de Fred. So I researched it online and found that it's a French pastry shop owned by Frederic Vaucamps and famous for it's one-of-a-kind light meringue and cream coated Merveilleux Cakes and soft brioches that the shop calls Cramiques. The NYC shop is the first outside of Europe and just opened this year on January 9th. After learning this I wish I had waited in line for a taste but it was fun playing investigator and I'm going to have to make a bee-line for it the next time I visit NYC.

A Lot Of Help From My Friends

I haven't posted about the Wednesday Community Meal in two weeks and I promise I have a good excuse.

Initially I had planned to miss just the meal on Wednesday January 21st because of a family trip to New York City but then that darn blizzard hit the city and our flight home was cancelled causing me to also miss this week's meal on January 28th.

Volunteering is something I look forward to every week and I felt really bad about not being able to be there two weeks in a row but I didn't stress because I knew the meal was in the good hands of my friends and fellow volunteers.

When I told Fred who helps organize the meal that I would have to be gone a second week he kindly said "Don't worry," and added "Portland is 54 degrees, sunny and no wind." Of course the rain stopped and the weather got nice when I was away!

Volunteer Cheryl is the one who filled in for me in the kitchen, planning the meals to best utilize the gleaning and figuring out what additional ingredients were needed. She did an amazing job and having lived on the East Coast,  she told me she knew that my original hope that I could still catch a flight home in time for the meal was "wishful thinking".

"I wasn't optimisitic when I talked with you this morning about a flight Tuesday night. We'll be fine and all is under control," she texted me.

I really do have the best friends! So many of them came in extra early to make both Wednesday Community Meals a success. I owe them big time!

On the 21st, they served 301 meals and on the 28th, they served 302 meals. Cheryl and Nancy kindly sent me photos so I wouldn't feel too left out. I'm really looking forward to getting back to work next week and seeing everyone.

Wednesday January, 21st. 

Cheryl, Martha, Kate, Terri, Ann, Andy and Bill pose for a quick pic in the kitchen.

Most of the guests got hot dogs and fries as their main entree which I have no doubt was very popular with the guests.

Wednesday January, 28th.

Volunteers Andy and Tom came in extra early to help out.

Volunteers Frank and Frank (I love that!) worked hard serving in the dining room.

Guests got homemade meatloaf, rice and green beans as their main entree. This looks so good! The meal was obviously in great hands.

Cake For A Crowd

Mini Red Velvet Cakes

Before serving, place each cake in a cupcake liner and add a dollop of cream cheese icing.

These Mini Red Velvet and Carrot Cakes were part of a dessert buffet that I recently catered and of all the things I made, they were the easiest and very well received. I think people liked that the mini cakes were small enough that they could try one of each without over indulging and I liked that I was serving cake without having to slice and plate it.

To make the mini cakes, I simply baked my favorite Red Velvet and Carrot Cakes and then broke them into crumbs that I mixed with enough cream cheese icing to form a mixture that would hold together. This is basically how cake balls are made except that I skipped the rolling into balls step and the dipping into a coating step and just scooped (I used a 1-inch cookie scoop) and released the cakes flat side down on a piece of parchment paper. When you are ready to serve, place each cake in a mini cupcake paper and add a dollop of cream cheese icing on top. That's all there is to it and you have my favorite new way to serve cake to a crowd.

Mini Carrot Cakes

A tray of mini carrot cakes at the reception.

Here are the cake and icing recipes I used, but don't be afraid to get creative and make these using other cake and frosting recipes. Be creative and have fun.

Red Velvet Cake
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups granulated sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 ounce red food coloring
1/2 cup buttermilk
4 large eggs
1 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 1/2 cups flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and line two 9-inch cake pans.

Cream butter, add vanilla and mix well. Add sugar and beat until fluffy.

Add eggs, sour cream, food coloring and buttermilk. Mix well.

Add salt and baking soda. Mix well.

Add cocoa powder and flour and mix just until blended. Don't over mix.

Divide batter among the two cake pans and bake for 45 to 50 minutes or until done.

Carrot Cake

2 cups sugar

1 cup vegetable (I have also used canola or olive oil)

4 eggs

2 cups flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

2 tsp. cinnamon

3 cups raw grated carrots (I usually add an additional cup to bring the total to 4)

1/2 cups chopped walnuts

1 (8 oz.) can crushed pineapple

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. With a whisk, cream together sugar and oil. Add eggs; cream well. Add flour, soda, salt and cinnamon. Mix well. Add carrots, nuts and pineapple. Mix well and pour into two 9-inch cake pans that are greased and floured. Bake at 300 degrees for approximately 50 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. 

 Cream Cheese Icing

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

12 oz. (1 1/2 pkg.) cream cheese 

1/4 cup softened butter

2 teaspoons vanilla

Whip cream cheese and butter thoroughly. Add vanilla. Add sugar, a little at a time and whip until smooth.