Red Velvet Cake

Elegance and grace are the names that I would like to use as synonyms for this cake. Its sheer beauty is strikingly enough for the crowd to woo your baking skills.

However, it doesn't really need that much for care to bake this. All you need is a little bit of patience and of course the most important ingredient of all – Love

You can bake this for anniversaries, birthdays and even Valentine’s Day.

Few things to remember: I used something that I would like to call a “Mock Cream Cheese”. 

However please feel absolutely free to use cream cheese frosting instead of my mock cream cheese. 

Living in a place of limited supply, I do need to make adjustments, thereby trying to replicate.

If you are not fond of cream cheese, it’s perfectly okay to just use butter cream. Again, I used an egg less version for the sponge, you can always opt for the regular sponge.

For the butter cream I land up using the same amounts of butter to confectioner’s sugar, however, if you wish you can always use more but I do not recommend using less.

For the cake:

1 cup flour

2tbsp cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

Pinch of salt

1 cup plain bottled soda water

100 gms softened butter

1 can sweetened condensed milk

¼ cup red food color

Sift the baking powder, soda, flour, cocoa powder and salt and set aside.

In a mixing bowl, beat the butter until it’s light, fluffy and pale. Add the condensed milk and combine. Alternately, starting with the dry ingredients, add the flour mixture and the cup of soda. Sometimes you might need a little extra soda; the batter should be dropping consistency.  Mix the color once all the ingredients are properly combined.

Bake this in a round loose bottomed 8 inch cake tin for about 45-50 minutes. Do check the doneness after 45 minutes. Depending on the oven, the time may vary.

Once done, let it cool for about 15 minutes before cutting the cake in three equal portions for the icing. Let it cool completely.

For the filling:

100grams butter

100 grams icing sugar

¼ cup melted cheese

Beat the softened butter and the sifted icing sugar until its extremely pale, thick and fluffy. It should take about a good 10-15 minutes to achieve this.

For the caramel:

I find it particularly difficult to explain how to make any decorations using caramel. I used a cup of castor sugar with a tad bit of water. Once it started becoming amber, I added red food color to it.

I made the rings on a silicone baking sheet and while it was still a little soft, I peeled it off and molded it around the cake.

It doesn’t really add much to the flavor of the cake but it definitely gives it sheer chic elegance!

Assembly:

Spread a layer of cheese butter cream on the cake slice. Sandwich it with the next layer repeating the same. Top it with the last layer of cake and spread the icing evenly on the whole cake, covering nooks and crannies. Once evenly covered with butter cream, mold the caramel rings onto it. Set it in the fridge for few minutes in case the butter cream becomes too soft.