Saturday, October 16, 2010

Seeing Red.

After my post on red carpet looks, I was inspired by the thought of the color red and it seemed like a good time to share a wonderful all-red-feast experience. A while back I made some vegan red velvet cupcakes and accompanied them with some red raspberry lemonade. Although I am not vegan, I have a good friend who is, so for a little afternoon sitting on his front porch (he even has rocking chairs!) I thought I would treat him to some vegan friendly sweets. 

When I read the ingredients from this recipe, I was a bit skeptical, but if I may say so myself the cupcakes turned out really delicious!

Making the batter...
... I love the rich red color!
They tasted even better than they looked!
For the frosting I made a simple vanilla frosting, also vegan, from here.

As far as the raspberry lemonade, I made up a simple recipe: In a large pitcher squeeze about a dozen large lemons, add water to taste, add 5 or 6 tea bags of raspberry tea and let them soak for a while. The lemonade will start turning a lovely red color. Once the lemonade is the red color below, take out the tea bags, add sugar to taste, lots of ice cubes and put in the fridge until its nice and cold! This is a faster and cheaper way than making it with fresh raspberries, which can be hard to find when they are not in season. Plus adding the raspberry tea bags, took some of the sourness of the lemons away and meant having to use less sugar.

The whole red feast. Delicious.

xoxo,
Pilar

2 comments:

  1. It all looks so delicious! What kind of red food dye did you use? I know that stuff often gets made from insects, but I think there's a version out there made from beets. When I make red velvet I use beets directly and it doesn't just add color but really gives that velvety texture as well.

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  2. I used a brand called Seelect (they are a great resource for vegan and all organic products), but a small bottle of red dye was pretty expensive! I wish I had known about the beets... how do you use them, do you make them into juice first?

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