Last week I bought some cream cheese to make a frosting for an Apple Cake I
made. The Apple Cake wasn’t the success I hoped so I didn’t ice it. So what to bake to use the cream cheese, well it could only be Red Velvet Cake!
Red Velvet Cake is one of those cakes that ticks all the boxes – chocolate, moist and covered in frosting – what more could you want. So here’s my recipe for Red Velvet Cake.
Red Velvet Cake
Ingredients
For the cake:
265g self raising flour
300g caster sugar
113g vegetable oil – I used rapeseed oil
2 large eggs
240g plain natural yoghurt
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
At least 1 teaspoon of red food colouring gel – you might need more to make it redder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon of lemon juice or white vinegar
For the frosting:
600g icing sugar
100g butter – room temperature
250g full fat soft cream cheese – I used Philadelphia
Method
Pre-heat the oven to 175c and grease and line 2 x 18cm springform cake tins.
Using a stand mixer mix together the eggs and oil.
Next add the sugar, yoghurt and red food colouring and mix well. I mixed these together in a bowl first before adding them to the mixer so I could slowly get the red colour right.
The add in the vanilla extract, flour and cocoa powder and mix together on a medium speed.
In a small bowl mix the bicarbonate of soda and vinegar together. When it 
fizzes up add it to the mixer and combine it into the other ingredients.
Divide the mixture evenly between the two tins and bake for 30-35 minutes. Mine were ready in 32 minutes.
Leave in the tins to cool for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a cooling rack.
When the cakes are completely cool slice each one in half so you have 4 circles of sponge. This will give you 4 layers in the finished cake. I cut mine using a very 
sharp bread knife. You will see from the pictures that my yoghurt mix was very red but the cake is a rich brown. When I added the cocoa powder the mixture turned brown straight away. This is maybe because I used a dark chocolate cocoa powder as I like a more bitter chocolate flavour.
Put all the frosting ingredients into the mixer and combine until silky smooth.
Put your first piece of cake onto a plate and then cover the top with frosting. 
Sandwich the next layer on top, and then cover the top of that one with more frosting. Repeat until you have used a 4 pieces of sponge. With the remaining frosting coat the top and if you have enough frosting left over the sides of your cake too.
And there you have it, delicious Red Velvet Cake!
