Red Velvet Cake

Hii there!
Today we're making Red Velvet Cake. The Red Velvet is one of the world’s most popular flavors; it’s a bit chocolaty, very vanillary, slightly salty but also sweet: it’s a bit of everything and it's incredibly delicious! 
Though, I have to admit that it took me few tries to get the perfect recipe and I’m glad to share it with you, so let’s get cooking!

You'll need:

  - For the cake:

• 300g flour
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 100g butter
• 300g sugar
• 2 eggs
• 240ml vegetable oil
• 240ml buttermilk
• 1 tsp white vinegar 
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• Red food coloring (use gel or liquid for better results)

  - For the cream cheese frosting:

• 2 packs of Chantilly cream (the cream whip kind)
• 180ml cold milk (I reduced the amount of milk mentioned on the pack) 
• 240g cream cheese
• 2 tbsp powdered sugar

Let’s start: 

   The cake:

1) Preheat your oven on 180°C  and get your baking tins ready by greasing them with butter and dusting them with flour.

2) In a bowl, sift together the dry ingridents: flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt, and whisk to combine.

3) In a mixer, mix the butter and sugar together until well combined, then add the eggs one at a time, mixing well in between each, keep mixing until it becomes creamy.

4) Add the oil, vinegar, vanilla extract and buttermilk one at a time and mix well in between each.

5) Gently and gradually, add the dry ingredients and don’t forget to scrap the sides of the bowl so everything is nicely incorporated.

6) Finally, add a good amount of red food coloring to the batter and mix it in gently. You want your batter to have a nice bright red color.

7) Divide your batter equally into your tins and gently tap it on the table.

8) Bake it for about 20min, until it is firm and when a toothpick or a knife is inserted into the centre of the cake, it comes out dry. 

9) Let it cool on a side a little bit and then get it out of the tin and let it cool completely.


   The frosting: 

1) Whip the Chantilly cream on high speed until it gets firm and fluffy.

2) In another bowl, add the sugar to the cream cheese, and beat it until smooth.

3) Gently mix both of the creams together and let your frosting chill in the fridge until you’re ready to use it (you can add a bit more sugar if you think it’s not sweet enough)

   The decoration:

If your cakes are a little domed, it’s okay, with a sharp knife slice off the excess of sponge to create a flat surface and keep it aside for decoration later.
Spread a bit of the cream in the centre of your serving plate and then place your cake, it will help it stick better to the plate. Then put a generous amount of cream cheese and spread it evenly to the edges. Then, place the second cake, lightly press it to help it stick better to the previous layer and put it in the freezer for about 10-15min, you don’t want the cream to melt and the cake to fall apart while you’re decorating it. Repeat this step until all your layers are done. After that, use the excess of cream that oozed when you assembled the layers to cover the cake with a fine coat of cream (known as The crumb coat : it helps to lock the crumbs of the cakes to get a nice neat look in the end) and let chill in the freezer for about an hour. Spread the rest of the frosting on the sides and top of the cake and smooth it until you get a nice uniform coat. Finally, decorate it with the crumbs you kept earlier and let it in the fridge until you’re ready to serve it.

P.S: for these measures, you can use two 18 cm tins to bake two little but quite thick cakes. In the pictures shown here, I used this recipe twice to bake 4 thin 23cm cakes so I can get a big layer cake because there was so many of us.

Thank you for stopping by and I really hope you'll give this recipe a try!

Bon Appétit