a birthday cake.



I have always found it quite sweet and endearing that one of my favorite bloggers, the beautiful and ever-inspiring Andrea of Hula Seventy, bakes a red velvet cake every year on her birthday (you can read more about it here). On Saturday I turned twenty-six years old and since I love baking and wanted a lovely cake for my birthday, I decided it would be nice to follow her tradition and bake my own. Instead of following the recipe she uses, the original Waldorf-Astoria one, I used one from marthastewart.com (mainly just due to the fact that I didn't have shortening on hand). It turned out quite moist with such a nice vanilla/cocoa flavor. And oh, that cream cheese frosting- I could have eaten it with a ladle.





Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting: from marthastewart.com

Ingredients:

3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pans
2 1/2 cups cake flour (not self-rising), sifted, plus more for pans
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 one-ounce bottles liquid red food coloring (I only used one and it was still quite red)
3 tablespoons lukewarm water
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon white vinegar
Cream Cheese Frosting for Red Velvet Cake (recipe follows)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter two 8-by-2-inch round cake pans. Line with parchment paper, and butter again. Dust with flour, and tap out the excess; set aside. In a medium bowl, sift together cake flour, cocoa, and baking powder; set aside.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter and sugar, and beat on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 15 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla, salt, food coloring, and water; beat, scraping down the sides of the bowl, until well combined. Add reserved dry ingredients in additions, alternating with the buttermilk; beat on low speed until well combined.
In a small bowl, stir together baking soda and vinegar; add to batter. Beat on medium speed for 10 seconds. Be sure not to over beat. Divide batter between prepared pans, and bake until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove pans from oven, and transfer to a wire rack to cool, about 15 minutes. Turn cakes out onto rack; let stand until completely cool.
Using a serrated knife, trim tops of cakes so surfaces are level. Place a layer on a cake stand or cardboard round, and spread about 1/3 of the frosting over top. Place the second layer on top, and spread with the remaining frosting over the tops and sides of assembled cake. Transfer to refrigerator, and chill until ready to serve.

For the cream cheese frosting

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 (8-ounce) cream cheese, room temperature
2 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Place butter in bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, and beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add cream cheese, and beat until well combined and fluffy, about 2 minutes more. Add sugar and vanilla, and beat until combined, about 2 minutes.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Delicious Dried Plum Dessert for Autumn

Image
Two years ago in October everyone's favourite Parisian-American foodblogger, David Lebovitz , hosted a one-off Prune Blogging Thursday that resulted in a number of recipes using the humble wrinkled prune , aka dried plum. I submitted a recipe for healthy prune cake , which tasted much better than it looked. However, this time I've got a dried plum dessert recipe that both tastes good and looks good . The recipe is adapted from an Estonian cookbook " Kohupiima- ja kodujuusturaamat " (100 Rooga) and yields 6 small portions. I've garnished mine with sweet pomegranate seeds , but you can use lavender or lemon balm or simply dust the dessert with icing sugar. If you cannot find curd cheese (a popular ingredient here in Estonia), then ricotta or even cottage cheese (press through the sieve) would probably work as well. This would make a nice Christmas dessert - just in case you're already imagining the Christmas menu in your head :) Dried Plum and Curd Cheese Desse...
Read more

layered brownies.

Image
After the spice explosion of Thanksgiving (cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves, oh my!), all I could think about on Monday was something rich and chocolatey. Searching through my pantry, I was dissapointed to find nothing but a tiny bit of cocoa powder and some chocolate syrup. I was quite close to giving up and baking something else when I came across a recipe in an old christmas cookie magazine for brownies using chocolate syrup instead of regular melted chocolate. Hoorah! I was saved. The original recipe for these used a combination of chocolate and peppermint flavoring, but halfway through making them, I sadly found that I had no more mint extract. Instead, I mixed in some caramel extract into the cream mixture, which seemed to turn out just fine. I am sure a lot of different extracts and flavorings would work nicely: cherry extract, Kahlua, Amaretto, coconut flavoring, etcetera. Be on the lookout though. The spices will be back shortly. It's holiday time! Layered Brownies: recipe ...
Read more

Moist, moister, moistest: rhubarb muffins

Image
Photo updated in May 2009 We are still enjoying the rhubarb bounty . Here's a recipe for really moist rhubarb muffins that I made twice last week. Firstly, they were served at a 'girly' housewarming/ birthday party last Thursday, attended by all my aunties (that's three maternal and one paternal), my parents (my dad was unable to attend the 'real' birthday party on a previous weekend), as well as some of my first cousins (not all 11 though:). Instead of birthday cake , I made lots of these rhubarb muffins that day, served as a pyramid on a cake stand. Very pretty!! But in the midst of all the buzz and excitement, we forgot to take a picture. Not that it mattered much, as it gave me a good excuse to make these very same muffins again on Sunday. These muffins, let me tell you, are the moistest muffins you'll make. They're so moist, that even if you eat them on the following day, they taste like they're freshly baked. Delicious! Rhubarb muffins ( Rab...
Read more