Recipe: Just Beet It! Red Velvet Doughnut Holes

Just Beet It! Red Velvet Doughnut Holes

Happy & Healthy Cooking,

Fun-Da-Mentals Kitchen Skills

• massage :

  to rub or knead a food to tenderize (e.g., raw beef) or one food into another to infuse flavors (e.g., mint leaves into sugar or oil and salt into kale leaves).

• measure :

  to calculate the specific amount of an ingredient required using a measuring tool (like measuring cups or spoons).

• wet vs dry :

  to mix wet and dry ingredients separately before combining them: dry ingredients are flours, leavening agents, salt, and spices; wet ingredients are those that dissolve or can be dissolved (sugar, eggs, butter, oils, honey, vanilla, milk, and juices).

History of Red Velvet Cake!

• In the Victorian era, if a host wanted to serve a 'luxury' cake, it would be a Velvet cake, known for its smooth, soft texture. This type of cake would be a nice departure from the denser, chewier cakes served at that time. Typical ingredients may have included baking soda, buttermilk, butter, vinegar, eggs, vanilla, and flour. The result of the acids in the buttermilk and vinegar reacting with the baking soda would have helped to create that velvety mouthfeel. 
• Adding cocoa to a velvet cake produced the Red Velvet Cake, as the cocoa combined with the acidic buttermilk or vinegar created a faint red color. With the later addition of beetroot and, much later, red food dye, the cake became even redder. 
• Although the cake is considered a Southern recipe, in the 1920s, New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel created a Red Velvet Cake, also called the Waldorf-Astoria cake. And, in Canada, in the 1940s and 50s, Eaton's department store chain restaurants sold a Red Velvet Cake they promoted as their exclusive recipe. 
• The original frosting used on the cake was "ermine" icing, a white frosting also called "cooked flour" or "boiled milk" icing, made with flour, milk, sugar, butter, and vanilla. The name "ermine" came from the white, winter fur of the ermine, a member of the weasel family.

Let's Learn About New York + New York City!

• New York is both a state and a city in the United States. New York City, nicknamed "The Big Apple," comprises five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx, with over 8 million people.  
• In 1626, Dutch colonists acquired Manhattan Island from its native owners by trading various trinkets and goods worth 60 Dutch guilders, or about 24 dollars!
• The indigenous Haudenosaunee and Algonquian peoples, consisting of several different tribes, originally inhabited the state. An Algonquian tribe, the Lenape, made their home on the land where New York City is now. In the 1500s, an Italian explorer first made contact with them, and then in the 1600s, they had further exposure to Europeans while trading with Dutch fur traders. Dutch colonists had a settlement there called New Amsterdam. When the British claimed it, they renamed it New York in honor of the Duke of York. The city was the US capital from 1785 until 1790, and since then it has been the largest city in the country. New York City prospered and, with the building of the Erie canal and the railroads, it became the center of trade and finance in the United States.
• New York City is also a great tourist magnet. Some of the most popular visitor attractions, apart from shopping, are Central Park, Chinatown, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met), Broadway, Times Square, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Coney Island, and Carnegie Hall. The list of tourist spots also includes Grant's Tomb, the Bronx Zoo, the Empire State Building, the Rockefeller Center, the 9/11 memorial, and One World Trade Center.
• The United Nations headquarters is in New York City.
• The subway in New York City is the most extensive subway system worldwide. It has 665 miles of track. 
• Taxi cabs are prevalent in New York City, and cab drivers communicate with other drivers primarily by honking their car horns. The taxis are yellow because the man who started the Yellow Cab company read that yellow is the easiest color to spot.
• New Yorkers love their pizza! They opened the first pizzeria in the US in 1895.
• At 1,776 feet tall, the One World Trade Center building is the tallest in the US.
• The Empire State Building in New York City is 1,454 feet tall at its tip. Its name comes from New York state's nickname, the Empire State. It once was the world's tallest building and was named one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
• The Statue of Liberty, a copper statue designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, a French sculptor, sits on Liberty Island in New York City. Gustave Eiffel (of Eiffel tower fame) built its metal framework. It was a gift by the French people to the people of the United States in 1886 in honor of 100 years of US independence. Lady Liberty is 151 feet high, but the statue is just over 305 feet from the ground. Did you know that the index finger of the Statue of Liberty is 8-feet long?