Red Velvet Cupcakes with Meringue Frosting
Dec 22, 2015
Today is officially the first day of winter. Well, much to my luck there's been almost no winter here in Toronto. Apart from a day or two where you could see a couple flurries flying by, the weather is pretty mild.
I don't know if I'm happy about that or not, given that over these couple days where the temperature was hitting minus something, I was honestly wishing I was living back in Russia. -4°C here feels way worse than -15°C there, way worse. Well, it looks like I'll need to get used to that anyway.
But I have to be honest, I really like the winter solstice. Not that I particularly like dark, cold days; but if you think about it, from now on, it only gets better. I know the colder months are on their way, but at least in a couple months from now you can get brighter, longer days.
Maybe I'm just crazy. That's a possibility. But I like to see things on the bright side.
And while we're all into this "will there be any winter this year or not?" thing, I decided to bake a couple red velvet cupcakes with crisp swiss meringue frosting because YES!
I had the idea for these cupcakes while playing around with the Merveilleux the other day. When I was in Colombia earlier this year, I had this extraordinarily good cupcake in a small bake shop close to where I was staying. It was around Valentine's Day and they were selling cupcakes almost like this, but topped with hearts and all that.
It took me a while to get that the topping was just swiss meringue (because, well, you know, red velvet cupcakes are almost always paired with cream cheese frosting), but once I got it, I decided I wanted to make it crispier, almost like a huge snowball on top of each cupcake.
So basically, after you top the cupcakes with meringue, you leave them in the oven at 275°F/135°C for about 5 minutes. They will dry lightly on the outside and still be soft (like a normal frosting) in the middle. Absolutely amazing!
Considering how fast they are going away here at home, I'm pretty sure they will be a huge hit during Christmas :)
