Red Velvet Ice Cream Recipe and Red Heart Shaped Chocolate Chip Cookies

Woo your significant other for Valentine’s Day with this Red Velvet Ice Cream!

Just for the fun of it, I made my usual favorite chocolate chip cookies the other day, but had the idea to turn the cookie dough red and bake the cookies in a heart shape.  For just making it up as I went along, I was really happy with how they turned out!

I made half a recipe of the cookie dough and after beating the butter and sugar together, I added some red food coloring.  It was a perfect shade of red/pink.  I then just scooped the cookies with a cookie scoop and baked them round.  But AS SOON as I took them out of the oven, I used the spatula and scrunched one end together a bit to make the point at the bottom of the heart, then I indented the top to make the two bumps at the top of the heart.  They formed perfectly, just know that you have to hurry before the cookies start to set up on the baking sheet and are too hard to shape. 

While I was making the cookies, I stuck some cookie dough in some small ramekins and put a chocolate inside, to mimic my most popular Molten Lava Chocolate Chip Cookies. 

I was in a Valentine kind of mood.  The boys came home from school and ate the heart shaped cookies up.  Then between Kevin and Scott, they later ate almost all of the six, BIG RED Molten Lava Chocolate Chip Cookies I’d made.  I had fun with some photos after deciding these cookies needed some Red Velvet Ice Cream on  top.  I just made up a recipe and I actually think it turned out pretty well!  I’ve never even seen or heard of Red Velvet Ice Cream before, though I’m sure it’s been done before.  I really just took my favorite vanilla ice cream recipe, added one tablespoon of cocoa powder and some red food coloring.  It tastes like red velvet to me!

Red Velvet Ice Cream, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!

3/4 cup granulated sugar

pinch of salt

1 tablespoon cocoa powder

1 cup heavy cream

1  1/2 cups half and half

1/2 cup 2% milk

1 tablespoon red food coloring

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

In a medium sized saucepan heat sugar, salt,  cocoa powder  and the cream over medium heat until well combined and sugar is dissolved.  In a large bowl, combine the half and half and milk (*you can use any combination, 3 cups total of cream, half and half or milk that you’d like, this is just what I had at the time).  Whisk in the heated sugar, cocoa and cream mixture and combine well.  Stir in the red food coloring and vanilla.  Set bowl in a larger bowl with ice water to make an ice bath.  Stir every few minutes until the mixture is cold.  (It only took 10-15 minutes!).  Pour into bowl of ice cream maker and churn according to manufacturer’s instructions, about 20-25 minutes.  Remove ice cream from bowl and store in an airtight container.  Freeze for a couple hours.

And after all of that, Kevin doesn’t like red velvet (I already knew that), so he won’t even try the ice cream.  He’s a chocolate ice cream kind of guy, which is fine by me!  I love him no matter!

(Okay, so I must admit, Kevin and I don’t take enough pictures together.  This one is from our anniversary in June 2009.)  Let me see, there’s got to be something more recent……

Here we go, in October of last year, so just a few months ago, Kevin and I went to a cute little beefalo burger place (owned by some neighbors of ours), called The Bomb Diggity.  Kevin took a challenge and ate a 2 lb. burger—1 pound patty and another pound off all the fixin’s and bun. 

During the time it took me to eat my little slider size burger and my mom and dad to eat their regular size burgers, Kevin ate that thing.  This next photo is Kevin, my mom and I all taking our last bite together at the same time!

So there—a more recent picture of the love of my life and I.  (And you’re welcome, Mom, for leaving you in the picture.  I could have cropped it.)  But I wanted to leave her in the photo.

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A couple other great ideas for Valentine’s Day treats I’d thought of are linked here--

Raspberry Swirl Cheesecake with Chocolate Cookie Crust

Chocolate Truffle Heart Cakes

Fudgie Wudgies Cookies—just because it’s so fun to say and they are delicious and would be great for any chocolate lover in your life.

National Bundt Cake Day—Cinnamon Ripple Sweet Potato Bundt Cake, Red Velvet Bundt Cake and Banana Bundt Cake

It’s all been building up and building up to this—the actual day.  My birthday National Bundt Cake Day is finally here.  Mary, The Food Librarian has been rockin’ out bundt cakes for 30 days leading up to today.  She loves bundts, big bundts.  It has been such a yummy experience to see what bundt she’ll post next.  I’m not as cool as Mary, so I have only made four bundt cakes during the last month, but does it count for more that I made three of those in the last 24 hours?

I’m not sure if you got that today is also my birthday. (Ha, that’s just for you Megan---it’s. my. birthday.  Should I spell it out?  hehe kidding, I’m kidding.)  Anyway, just for fun, I made two bundt cakes yesterday as we had people over to eat cake and sort of celebrate then since Kevin had to work until late tonight.

I often have the Food Network on in the background of whatever I’m doing in the kitchen.  On Saturday, Paula Deen’s show was on and she was making a Cinnamon Ripple Sweet Potato Cake.  It looks great.  I decided that I wanted to make that bundt.

  

There are supposed to be pecans in the cinnamon ripple of the cake.  I toasted them.  Finished the cake, put the batter in the pan, added the ripple, then more batter, stuck the bundt in the oven, turned around and saw the pecans still sitting on the sheet pan I roasted them on.  Ugh.  The only other change I made to the cake was Paula’s cake had a white rum glaze on it and I decided to do a chocolate glaze.  Since I forgot the pecans inside, I sprinkled a bunch on the top.  Also just for kicks, I did add some mini chocolate chips to the ripple and the top of the cake.  The only other change I made was Paula’s recipe called for sour cream and I used Greek yogurt instead.

We liked the cake okay, but it didn’t have enough sweet potato flavor.  There were also some spices in it, but not enough.  It almost just tasted like a yellow cake with the cinnamon ripple and chocolate glaze.

I very much preferred this Marbled Chocolate Sweet Potato Cake I made a few weeks ago.

Then I also decided to finally make a Red Velvet Bundt Cake.  I have never made any kind of red velvet cake before.  This recipe I used is from the LA Times, which was a recipe they posted from Kiss My Bundt Bakery.

The cake is sure pretty and love the red color.  All of us that ate some of the cake weren’t super thrilled with it.  It tasted like the main flavor was oil.  (The recipes uses oil instead of butter.)  It didn’t really taste like the red velvet cake I’ve had before.  It does make me want to try some other recipes sometime.

 

The best part of the red velvet cake was the cream cheese frosting, which I changed a bit from the Kiss My Bundt recipe.  I added more powdered sugar than the recipe called for.

The cake was really oily.  Bummer.  But I’m glad I tried a red velvet cake finally and I’m sure I’ll try some other recipes.

After feeling a little disappointed about the two bundt cakes I made for my birthday National Bundt Cake Day, I decided to make another one today.  I also wanted to use the new bundt cake pan Kevin got me. 

So I whipped up half a recipe of one of my favorite cakes---Lots-of-Ways Banana Cake from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking From My Home to Yours.  The half recipe made six perfect individual bundts.  This pan is great—the cake just slid right out and all I did was spray it with cooking spray.

That’s my kind of bundt!

I love banana cake.  I just put a nice dollop of some of the cream cheese frosting left over from the red velvet cake in the center of each one and sprinkled on some pecans. 

That’s my bundt story.  Check out all the big bundt love on Mary’s blog!  (Thanks for the birthday shout out, Mary.   So sweet of you.)

Thanks also to everyone who came and left a nice birthday greeting on my surprise post from Kevin today!  I feel super blessed.  That really made my day!