Push It - Push It Good

About a month ago I saw a picture on one of the many Facebook baking sites I follow of push cakes.  I was instantly in love and I knew that I had to try out this new trend.  It turns out the most difficult part was finding the push up containers.  I finally found a site with them available and I ordered 100 which may seem like a lot but now that I know how cute they really are I think I should have ordered more (good thing they are reusable).  Because we are heading to my sister's awesome 2nd of July party on Friday I figured I had the perfect excuse to make a big batch of patriotic push cakes. 

What better cake to make for the 4th of July than red velvet!  And because I can't just do anything simple, I made half red velvet and half blue velvet with a white buttercream to tie it all together.  After many attempts I finally found a red velvet recipe that I like so I started there.

Red (or whatever color you like) Cake
2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup cocoa (less or none if you are making a lighter colored cake)
1 cup applesauce
1/2 cup oil
2 eggs
1 cup heavy cream
1 tsp white vinegar
1 tsp vanilla
2 Tbs red (or any color) food coloring (I use the gel food coloring as it's much stronger but liquid does work too)

Preheat oven to 350.
Sift together dry ingredients.  In a separate bowl whisk together the rest of the ingredients.  Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until just combined and batter is smooth.  For this time I scooped the batter into mini cupcake tins but you can use any type of pan for this recipe.  It actually is intended to make three thin 9" rounds or two thick 9" rounds.  For the mini cupcakes, bake for 12 minutes.  For a cake I usually bake for about 22-30 minutes, just until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Here's the red batter (I used AmeriColor super red coloring)

Here's the blue batter (this is a combo of AmeriColor electric blue and navy blue.  A little more teal than I wanted but oh well)

Once I had them baked and cooled, I had to trim the tops off so they would fit into the containers.

The only downfall to the push up containers is that they are hard to display because they are top heavy and just have the small stick on the bottom.  I bought a piece of floral foam and covered it in red and blue tissue paper and set the containers into it so they would stand up on their own.

I set in the red cupcakes and got my frosting ready. 

Snow White Buttercream

4 Tbs meringue powder

2/3 cup water

10 cups powdered sugar

1 1/4 cups shortening

1 Tbs cream of tartar

1 tsp clear vanilla

1/2 tsp almond extract

1/4 tsp butter flavoring

milk or heavy cream

Mix the water and meringue powder in a large mixing bowl until peaks form.  Mix in 4 cups powdered sugar.  Alternately mix in shortening and remaining powdered sugar.  Mix in remaining ingredients, adding just enough milk of cream until desired consistency is achieved.

I wanted to make my frosting a little more fun so I tried out a new technique (sorry I forgot to take pictures of this part).  I turned my piping bag inside out and put some alternating lines of red and blue gel frosting (the kind you can buy in the little tubes at a grocery or craft store) about halfway up the inside of the bag.  Carefully turn the bag right side out and add the white frosting.  I put a large star tip on the piping bag and put a layer of my red, white and blue frosting on top of the red cupcakes.

The lines of gel frosting gives kind of a cool swirl effect to the frosting.  After the red cakes were done, I added a blue cupcake to the top and frosted those as well, then I added some sanding sugar to the top for good measure.

I love how these turned out!  I will definitely be making many push cakes in the future.