Brainiac had this thing a while ago when every time he left the house he came back with a set of queen size sheets. Because I am, myself, a somewhat eccentric person, I didn't say a word until one day I was putting a newly cleaned set away on top of the pile (we never got to the bottom) and the whole of the linen closet collapsed on my head. So I managed to get him to stop buying and only last year managed to divest us (thank goodness for the preschool rummage sale and its needed donations) of seven sets, leaving us with four - two flannel, two sheeting.
Somewhere in the middle of the sheets he had a thing for lamps and bought five in the space of six weeks or so. And I - because this is not a bash Brainiac post - once went through a very regrettable velour tunic phase, ending up with nearly a dozen. Then there's my completely irrational need to purchase each and every magazine featuring a lemon cake and, really, there are only so many recipes for lemon cake.
So. When it came time to produce the birthday cake to complement the Girl's Chinese Dragon-themed party, I was reasonably confident that I had enough of Wilton's red paste to execute the iconic dark red, black and gold design because red icing paste is one of those things that I buy whenever I find myself within a mile or two of a Michael's.
Turns out that I emptied a jar of paste - using the remaining 2/3 of an ounce - along with a drop of black getting to the red I envisioned in my head. A quick (albeit messy rinse) and the jar ended up in recycling, accompanied by my realization that I have never seen one of those jars completely used up. My first jars (lavender and daffodil in color), bought 14 years ago, are still good and quite full even after multiple uses. My mom has jars that are probably not much younger than I. So, you know, that's a lot of red.
(A note on the design: a colleague prepared for me a Chinese New Year-related design that he suggested would be considered good luck for a birthday cake. My attempt to reproduce it came to a bad end almost immediately and thus we ended up with something described by the one person in attendance who might have been relied upon to know the difference - a five year old boy - as "a tiny bit Chinese looking but not really." To this I smiled and asked if he'd like an extra big piece. He did.)
Later that weekend I prepared to make the cupcakes I promised to the Boy's class as part of their Valentine's Day celebration. I told him I'd make any kind of cupcake he desired as long as the recipe did not require a special shopping trip. After a week of snowbound togetherness, his sister's birthday party and holiday weekend company I was in no mood for special acquisition errands and set him down with a pile of cookbooks. Some time later he wandered into the family room, where I sat with a glass of wine and a novel involving oddly modern-minded Dukes and the maidens they love.
"Red velvet!" he declared, smiling and pointing to a recipe from a 50s era church cookbook. I looked, noticed the buttermilk requirement and shook my head. Allrecipes to the rescue with a perfectly doable, no-shopping required alternative, provided by the McCormick company.*
The result, after dipping well into a second jar of red paste:
Adorable, even pre-iced. And very delicious...and a bit like crack to the child who is generally deprived of food color of all types (I am a soft touch when it comes to the combination of holidays and Childhood Magic). I only needed 24 for the classroom, teachers and assorted helpers so was delighted to keep a few back, purely in the interests of research. Thinking to make a batch to take to work, I wasn't sure I really had enough red to pull it off. Turns out, I have nothing to worry about.
Nothing at all, with three jars of red left to plunder. Red velvet for everyone!
* As delightful as the folks at McCormick no doubt are, I feel compelled to mention that I did and do not actually possess any of their own brand of red food color. I used paste I already bought (see above) and used much more than the equivalent of the one ounce of liquid called for in the recipe.
