Red Velvet Inspiration

As fellow fans will know, the popular 20th century philosopher Wittgenstein began his academic career, not as a philosophy student, but studying engineering at Manchester University. Whilst studying theoretical mathematics for the course, he stumbled across the works of Bertrand Russell. Inspired, Wittgenstein took himself straight to Oxford to learn from this great professor, who himself discovered philosophy through studying maths. Although their later theories of language and meaning radically diverged, Wittgenstein's early work on the nature of logic and language, the Tractatus, was heavily influenced by Russell's ideas. 

This is no unique case in the history of philosophy. Kant described Hume as 'awakening him from his dogmatic slumber': bringing to his attention the empiricist challenges to rationalist theories of knowledge. Socrates is probably the most famous example of a figure inspiring the philosophy in his followers, Plato, of course, being the one we know best; whom in turn inspired Aristotle.

As a philosophy student, I'm surrounded by people and ideas to be inspired by. As a baker for a hobby, my inspirations generally are limited to my few recipe books, Google, and reliance on my imagination. Besides this, I can only go out there and try the bakes the world already has to offer.

In the cupcake department, nobody does it like America. Luckily, I was there for a fortnight over Easter visiting a friend in Minneapolis. In the award winning Cupcake, Saint Paul, (they won Cupcake Wars, MTV equivalent of Great British Bake-Off) I tried my first red velvet cupcake. Divine. The cream cheese frosting was immaculate, one department where I failed in my own attempt. But I just had to try making some myself, and the sponge from this recipe, taken from the Hummingbird website, was pretty spot-on. An absolute winner with friends, many of whom hadn't heard of them. They look and taste great. 

- Red Velvet Cupcakes -

60g butter or marg
150g sugar
1 egg
20g cocoa powder
40ml red food colouring
½ tsp vanilla extract
120ml or 1 roughly cup buttermilk - which you can make by mixing a tablespoon of white vinegar or lemon juice with milk in the cup and leaving aside for a few minutes
150g plain flour
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1½ tsp distilled white vinegar (white malt works)

for cream cheese icing:
300g icing sugar
50g butter
125g cream cheese

Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy, then add the egg and continue to slowly beat until well mixed. 

In a separate bowl, mix the cocoa powder, vanilla extract and red food colouring into a dark red paste. Mix this into the other bowl. Then add half the buttermilk, and continue mixing slowly, then half the flour, then repeat this process for the other halves.

Finally, add the soda and vinegar to create a fizz to ensure the mixture will rise, and mix until the batter is smooth. Two-thirds fill 12 or so cupcake cases (I always use silicone ones) before baking for 25 minutes in an oven preheated to gas mark 5. 

For the cream cheese icing, you need to beat the above ingredients. I did so with an electric mixer as before but this rapidly descended to a runny white goo, and hence a failure. Do not follow this! In this instance, I actually have no tried-and-tested instructions, so I'd advise using previous butter-cream recipes or slowly working icing sugar into the butter, then the cream cheese, with a fork alone.

Someday I will make perfect cream cheese frosting; for now, its nothing a few sprinkles won't mask!