Red Velvet Cake (Not so Red)

The keen eyed among you will have noticed that this cake is not red. My full intension was to create a burgundy coloured cake a shade not too distant from the wine. However in place of this I made a regular brown cake reminiscently looking like a chocolate cake. This was simply because I didn’t add enough red food colouring in – if you do want a very red red velvet cake add 40 ml of red food colouring. While the colouring of the cake was admittedly a bit of a disaster the flavour was nothing but a success, with a complementing soft texture while retaining a denseness expected from a chocolate flavoured batter i.e. its blummin’ lovely!

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  What you need:

  
  Cake batter:
  

  • 150 g of unsalted butter 
  • 150 of caster sugar
  • 3 eggs 
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 1 tbsp vanilla extract (not essence!)
  • 150 g of plain flour
  • 50 g of cocoa powder
  • 1 tsp of baking soda
  • 1 tsp of baking powder
  • a pinch of salt
  • 100 ml of butter milk

  
  

  Topping and filling:

  • 300 g of icing sugar
  • 200 g cream cheese
  • 100 g of unsalted butter
  • a squeeze of lemon juice

  
  

  How to make it:

  
  

  1. Start by taking room temperature butter and mashing it up until its soft. Now cream the butter with the sugar, adding the sugar gradually. Creaming means vigorously bash the sugar into the butter; by doing this the sugar creates air pockets in the butter which will only get bigger as the cake cooks making the cake softer in texture. –It’s best using a machine to do this because after 10 minutes your arm is going to hurt, and it’s quicker.-
  2. Beat the eggs and yolk gradually into the butter- you really want the eggs to be well incorporated. Add in the vanilla extract at this point.
  3. Mix together all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Now we are going to follow the 3:2 method; add in one third of the dry ingredients and mix them in, then half of the butter milk mixing well and repeat; (another third of the dry, half the wet, and third of the dry) DO NOT OVER MIX THE BATTER. Batter done, line a cake tin with grease proof paper and butter it well.  Pour in the batter and cook in a pre-heated 180 ^oC oven for 20 – 30 minutes depending on your oven type (fan assisted etc.). To test whether the cake is cooked slide in a metal skewer and when you pull it out there should be no raw batter on the skewer. Let the cake cool a bit then take it out and place it on a wire cooling rack. If like me you do not have a cooling rack I placed the cake on top of 4 ramekins allowing cold air to circulate around the cake cooling it.
  4. While the cake is in the oven make up the topping / filling. Start by quickly cleaning out your mixing bowl, and as before take room temperature butter and bash it up by hand or in the machine. Throw in the cream cheese icing sugar and a quick squeeze of lemon and mix until the frosting is thick and homogeneous (well mixed up). If you want a more lemony taste finely grate in some of the lemon zest.
  5. Once the cake has cooled chop off the ballooning that might have risen in the centre of the cake, you want to make the top of the cake flat.  Slice the cake through the middle of the circumference and lather the bottom bit of the cake with the frosting. Then put the top of the cake back on but “upside down” (this gives you a flatter top to your cake) and spread on the rest of the topping (keeping a rough looking top.) Finally just for a bit of decoration use the bit of cake you cut off initially and crumble it on top of the frosting.-I served it with double cream but that was pretty naughty-