Not so red but very velvety cake

I always find it difficult to get the real red that makes a red velvet cake or cupcake. The new bought red liquid red might be easy to use but it definitely does not get me the red I wanted. But … as long as the cake is velvet, right? And velvety it is!

Read with me for another successful Hummingbird Bakery recipe. The recipe is for 12 to 16 cupcakes and is perfect for 2 20cm round baking pans.

For the cake you will need:

120 g butter, softened

300 g sugar

2 large eggs

20 g cocoa powder

40 ml red food colouring

1 tsp vanilla essence

300 g plain flour

1tsp salt

240 ml buttermilk

1 tbsp white vinegar

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Grease and line your pans while you preheat your oven at 190°.

Cream the butter and the sugar together until pale and fluffy (best cake related word ever). Break in the eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition and mixing in the scrapings from the side of the bowl.

In a separate bowl, stir together the cocoa powder, food colouring and vanilla essence to form a paste. Add the paste to the batter, mixing thoroughly until the paste is completely incorporated.

Sift together the four and salt in another bowl (yes you will need all the bowls so better have a dish washer or no fear of washing up), then add the flour to the batter in two batches alternating with the buttermilk. Lastly, in another bowl (told ya!), mix together the vinegar and bicarbonate of soda (and look closely what happens here: baking is chemistry!) by hand and add it to the cake batter mixing it in until it is fully incorporated.

Spoon the batter into the prepared baking pans. To make sure that each pan has the same amount of batter, I use (as I do to fill cupcake cases) an ice cream spoon: around 10 each will do.

Place in the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes.  Allow to cool for a while before removing the cakes from the pan to continue cooling on a rack.

For the frosting you will need

100 g butter softened

600 g icing sugar

250 g cream cheese (such as Philadelphia)

Beat the butter and the icing sugar together until no large lumps of sugar remain and the mixture is sandy in texture.

Add the cream cheese and mix together slowly until everything is incorporated, then increase the speed to medium and beat the frosting until it is soft and fluffy (yep! Again).

I choose to cut both cakes into two layers and spread a thin layer of frosting between every layer. If you prefer thick layers of frosting you can choose to leave the cakes as they are and just stick them together with lots of cream cheese frosting.

Preview of two upcoming recipes