I can recall how immense the hype was for naked and semi-naked cakes, same time last year. I failed to understand why would anyone prefer to eat cake with a portion of the frosting missing, it simply bewildered me. However, once the photographs started flooding all social mediums, dainty caked draped in flowers and drizzled with all forms of wonderful sauces, I finally caved. If it weren't for my family friend's son's 1'st birthday and her request of me to make a semi-naked cake to sit with the fauna and khaki theme, then this cake would not sit before you on your computer screens. I had immense fun putting this cake together, and I'm guaranteeing so will you.
Red Velvet Cake
Ingredients
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoon of baking soda
2 teaspoon of baking powder
2 teaspoon of salt
4 Tablespoons unsweetened, cocoa powder
4 cups sugar
2 cup vegetable oil or canola
4 eggs
2 cup buttermilk
4 teaspoon of vanilla extract
2-4 oz. red food coloring, depends how deep you want the color
2 teaspoon of white distilled vinegar
1 cup of prepared plain hot coffee
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 160 degrees celcius on a fan forced oven.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, cocoa powder and salt. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, combine the sugar and vegetable oil.
- Mix in the eggs, buttermilk, vanilla and red food coloring until combined.
- Stir in the coffee and white vinegar.
- Combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients a little at time, mixing after each addition, just until combined.
- Generously grease and flour two round, 9 inch cake pans with shortening and flour.
- Pour the batter evenly into each pan.
- Bake in the middle rack for 30-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Do not over bake as cake will continue to cook as it cools.
- Let pans cool on a cooling rack until the pans are warm to the touch.
- Slide a knife or offset spatula around the inside of the pans to loosen the cake from the pan.
- Remove the cakes from the pan and let them cool for a couple of hours. Before proceeding to frost your cakes with buttercream, wrap them firmly with several layers of cling wrap and place them in the freezer for 20 minutes to ensure they are the ideal temperature to be frosted.
Vanilla Bean Buttercream Frosting
Ingredients
Ingredients
500 grams salted butter
4 cups sifted icing sugar
4 tsp vanilla bean paste or 6tsp vanilla essence
Instructions
Whip the butter on a high speed for about 10-15 minutes. This will cause the buttercream to double in size and turn white in colour. This is how you will know you are ready to add the icing sugar to your butter. Proceed to added sifted icing sugar cup by cup and then finish by adding vanilla bean paste or vanilla essence to the mixture. The end result should be a fluffy, white cloud of vanilla bean buttercream.
Assembly
- Cut each cake into 2 separate halves, ensuring they are of the same size. Use a cake wire cutter for more precision. (You can find them here)
- Place a dab of buttercream frosting on your cake board to ensure the cake does not move after assembling.
- Place your first cake layer on the board and cover with sufficient buttercream frosting. For this step I prefer to pipe the cream onto the cake layer and then smooth it out with my long cake spatula to ensure an equivalent amount is piped onto each layer. Repeat this step for the remaining cake layers.
- Using your spatula, place odd amounts of buttercream around your cake, ensuring that you're not covering the entire cake. Then, using your cake scraper proceed to run it around the cake to remove excess buttercream.
- Decorate your cake as you desire. I decorated mine with baby breath flowers, crushed oreos and edible gold painted strawberries.
- Proceed to place in the fridge for 1-2 hours until the buttercream has set. Take your cake out from the fridge 30 minutes prior to serving and consumption.
