Day 5 Red Velvet Birthday Cake

So the present is all sorted for the birthday boy and on Saturday I made his cake. When I asked him what cake he wanted, he requested a red velvet cake. Red velvet is not a cake I have ever made before, it being an American recipe, so I went on a google search to try and find a good one. This is the recipe I went for, it had five star reviews, loads of positive comments, and best of all, lots of people said it was really easy.

I was a bit dubious about the recipe to begin with. As a Brit almost every cake I have ever made, bar a carrot cake, has been made with butter, whereas this one had vegetable oil and buttermilk instead. However, I went with it, although I did put less salt in than the recipe called for (the recipe said to use teaspoon of salt, and I just couldn't bring myself to put that much in!) I was also a bit light on the food colouring. It said to add 1-2oz red food colouring, but didn't specify what sort of colouring to use. I just used the liquid stuff you get in the supermarket, which is not as strong as some. I have also seen recipes that use beetroot juice for the colour, but as a confirmed beetroot hater, there was no way I was going to use that!

Although this recipe doesn't tell you how to make the cream cheese topping, there is a link on the page to another site for this part, however, after taking a look at the topping recipe, I decided to go with one I already had. This is a Nigella Lawson cream cheese topping that she uses for her chocolate guinness cake (which is amazing and I would definitely recommend giving it a whirl, you can find the recipe here)

For the topping I whisked 300g cream cheese (I used Philadelphia) until it's soft, then sieve over 150g icing sugar and whisk together then beat in 125ml of double cream. It makes an ah-mazing topping. Just a quick side note here, originally I had intended to use the cream cheese as a filling as well as a topping, but my recipe didn't make quite enough, so I would recommend times-ing the recipe by at least another half, if not double. Of course by the time I'd realised this, I'd already sliced the cake in half! I haven't completely decided yet, but I'm either just going to make more topping and cover the other cake as well, or I might use the other cake in a pudding, perhaps a trifle...

A half eaten red velvet birthday cake!

However this cake was yummy. I originally thought it was going to be really sickly, but it turned out to be just the perfect amount of sweet and it was so moist and light, I will definitely be making this one again!