Beetroot meets Copha

It was my little sisters birthday recently and she asked me to make her Oreo cupcakes so I did using the Cookies and Cream recipe from VCTOTW that I have made for my family a few times. It's my family's fav type of cupcake, whenever I make other cupcakes they tend to be disappointed but I am getting kind of bored of them.

So to try to mix it up a little I decided to try to make the icing pink since my sister is obsessed with the colour pink. I didn't want to use red food colour (or Cochineal) because it is made from insect blood, gross! So I sought out my new source of all food knowledge- post punk kitchen forum and was pointed in the direction of this recipe which explains that you can use raw beetroot juice. I followed the original recipe for cookies and cream icing and just added the juice and it worked without affecting the flavour. I also followed Solusta's suggestion of using copha in addition to margarine. He suggested that I "melt some copha and marg down, then cool it down again. Once it starts to solidify, mix it so that the copha doesn't solidify separately." Here is the end product, it was a great colour and texture. The flash makes it look paler than what it was.


But....

because I then added crushed up oreos it altered the colour, which I should have known since it turns my lovely white icing grey normally. I also put it in the fridge for several hours and it hardened up more than I thought it would and it wasn't easy to spread on to the cupcakes, but then butter is quite hard so maybe it was the right texture, or maybe I didn't mix it enough. I will certainly try both techniques again. Since I don't have a special cupcakes carrier YET (hint, hint), I generally take the cupcakes to the destination and then put icing on them otherwise they end up in a mess by the time I arrive. Before I left though I made some quick test ones which I know don't look pretty but you give you an idea of what they looked like.

My little sis and her friends loved them!

---------

By the way Mr T has finally started his blogging again at Ask Me Tomorrow.