OK OK I know - I’m so totally out of food fashion right now. Red Velvet cake got so popular, so 'blogged' that everyone just got little tired of it. I can’t help it - it’s my back up cake - the one I’ll always make when I don’t know what else to make, simply because people seem to fall about in a rapture whenever I make it. I'm told it tastes wonderful, not too sweet, fluffy yet moist - the chocolate cake that even those who dislike chocolate ask for again and again. At some point it would be great if i could get some feedback on how mine stands up against the traditional deep-south Red Velvet Cake.
I've heard Red Velvet cake described as the Dolly Parton of the cake world - over the top, in your face, that you love almost because it’s so tacky and with its shocking red interior against the bright white icing its obvious to see why. However, I like to bring a little class to my cakes and to be honest; I just don’t have the patience or the icing skills to do much more than some classy minimalism. I tend to aim for a nice mahogany red in my Red Velvet, still unashamedly red but not the screaming-violent-fluorescent-alarm-red that so many red velvet cakes seem to attain. As such, it’s a little hard to see the red on the pictures and I tend to find you get most of the effect when you cut it open. Dramatic and ever so slightly ever the top – you know you love it.
(Note; i have no idea where i got this recipe since its been hanging around on bits of paper in my study for years)
Red Velvet Cake
Ingredients
- 14g (½ oz) unsalted butter
- 390g Plain Flour (preferably good quality and strong)
- 60g unsweetened cocoa (not Dutch process)
- 1½ teaspoons salt
- 475ml rapeseed oil
- 505g granulated sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 6 tablespoons red food colouring
- 1½ teaspoons vanilla
- 300ml buttermilk
- 2 teaspoons bicarbinate soda
- 2½ teaspoons white vinegar.
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Place teaspoon of butter in each of 3 round 9-inch layer cake pans and place pans in oven for a few minutes until butter melts. Remove pans from oven, brush interior bottom and sides of each with butter and line bottoms with parchment.
2. Whisk cake flour, cocoa and salt in a bowl.
3. Place oil and sugar in bowl of an electric mixer and beat at medium speed until well-blended. Beat in eggs one at a time. With machine on low, very slowly add red food coloring. (Take care: it may splash.) Add vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk in two batches. Scrape down bowl and beat just long enough to combine.
4. Place baking soda in a small dish, stir in vinegar and add to batter with machine running. Beat for 10 seconds.
5. Divide batter among pans, place in oven and bake until a cake tester comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes. Let cool in pans 20 minutes. Then remove from pans, flip layers over and peel off parchment. Cool completely before frosting.
Yield: 3 cake layers.
Red Velvet cake icing
Ingredients
- 482ml heavy cream, cold
- 12 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
- 12 ounces mascarpone
- ½ teaspoon vanilla
- 170g confectioners’ sugar, sifted.
Directions
1. Softly whip cream by hand, in electric mixer or in food processor. Cover in bowl and refrigerate.
2. Blend cream cheese and mascarpone in food processor or electric mixer until smooth. Add vanilla, pulse briefly, and add confectioners’ sugar. Blend well.
3. Transfer cream cheese mixture to bowl; fold in whipped cream. Refrigerate until needed.
Yield: Icing for top and sides of 3-layer cake.
