Valentine’s Day in our house always has one thing on the menu – red velvet cake. Since the first Red Velvet Cake I made for Rob 3 years ago when we’d just started dating, we’ve evolved through a chocolate-layered <3"><3">Love Cake 2 years back, and last years Red Velvet Ombre Cake. It’s clear then that no ordinary cake is going to cut it!
This year I wanted to embrace one of my own loves – bundt cakes – with something new I’ve been wanting to try for a while, a hidden design.
The basic bundt batter is quite simple, I mixed it up as a whole, using what I needed to create the vanilla hearts, before adding the red colouring and cocoa for the red velvet outer.
Ingredients
225g butter
325g white sugar
6 eggs
380g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
325 ml buttermilk (or 315ml normal milk mixed with 10ml lemon juice)
2 teaspoons of vanilla essence
25g cocoa powder
Red gel food colouring
10ml milk
Method:
- Cream together the butter and sugar
- Beat in the eggs one at a time, with a little flour, then stir in the buttermilk and vanilla essence.
- Sieve the flour and baking powder and fold into the mixture
- Use as much mixture as needed and bake the hidden design centre first
- Add the cocoa, remaining milk and sufficient food colouring to the remaining batter for the red velvet outer
I made my hearts in a silicon mould – you could bake a sheet cake and cut them from this if you don’t have a tin of the shape you want to use as your design. Baking time is dependent on what shape and size of mould you use, mine took about 20 minutes at 180. They should be slightly under-baked as opposed to over-done. Wait until nearly cool before continuing.
I then trimmed off the edges of the heart cakes, to make them fit into the round design of the bundt.
Making sure the bundt tin was well greased, I put in a bottom layer of the red velvet mixture, before carefully layering in the heart cakes.
A final layer of red velvet covered up the hidden design, before baking at 180 for around 45 minutes, until cooked through.
Fresh out of the oven and a beautiful red colour!
To top a red velvet cake there really is only one choice in my book – cream cheese frosting!
To top this cake I used 75g cream cheese, 25g butter and 200g icing sugar, well-mixed and lavished over the top:
And to finish – a little hint to the inside – I used plunger cutters to create red heart sprinkles from some coloured fondant icing, letting them air-dry before use so the colour didn’t run into the icing.
All finished and ready to cut!
Rob was out when I finished baking, so I left the cake out on the table with suitable embellishment – like he wouldn’t know it was for him!
I asked Rob the next morning if he’d tried the cake when he got in. Yes he said. A big slice he said. And the inside…? Erm, just red and white cake, he said? What! Surely not! All that hard work wasted?
On closer inspection it was very clear he’d just been too keen to eat it. And the heart shape looked just perfect running through <3 Mission accomplished!
