Red Velvet

My cousin kept telling me about this red velvet cake recipe that she had, that every time she made it everyone would rave about it. I know the traditional way of making a red velvet is to use beetroot in the mixture and to be honest I've only recently started eating that vegetable... but I do like a scrumptiously moist cake. I took the recipe and decided to try cupcakes instead. Covered in cream cheese icing, these little red handfuls were rather delicious.

Ingredients:

2½ cups (350g) flour

1½ cups (300g) sugar

1 tsp (5ml) bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp (5ml) cocoa powder

1 tsp (5ml) salt

1 cup (250ml) buttermilk

2 eggs, at room temperature

1½ cups (375ml) vegetable oil

1 tsp (5ml) white vinegar

5 tsp (25ml) red food colouring or a beetroot reduction

1 tsp (5ml) vanilla essence 

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Prepare your choice of baking pan.

In a large mixing bowl add the flour, sugar, bicarbonate of soda, cocoa powder and salt together.

In another mixing bowl combine the buttermilk, eggs, oil, vinegar, food colouring and vanilla essence.

Mix the flour mixture into the buttermilk mixture. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 35-40 minutes for a large cake, and 18-20 minutes for cupcakes.

Decorate with cream cheese icing.

 

Icing:

125g butter

125g cream cheese

500g icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla

 

Cream the butter and icing sugar, it must be a very stiff mixture.

Stir in by hand the cream cheese and vanilla. Do not stir too vigorously or the mixture will become very runny.