Red Velvet Cake

I first heard of this cake from one of the blogs I follow from a long time ago, probably more than 1 year now. Initially I didn't see anything special about this cake, except it's red, so at that time I didn't bother going into making it. But for the next 6 months, I started to see so many people blog and rave about it, and it seemed that it was the big heat at that time. However, I still didn't get around to making it!!! Recently, I've seen a couple of my friends Lee and Sera started making them as well, which inspired/reminded me to give it a go!

I started researching in the red velvet cake recipes, most of the them are pretty similar. The only variation is pretty much the amount of food colouring. When I first read the recipe, I thought 'oh... my goodness, the whole bottle of red colouring?!?!?!?' Then I found some that uses only 2 tbsp, I guessed it depends on how vibrant you want the red to be. So I took a medium, and used half bottle! Never used so much colouring in a cake before, usually it's only a drop or two... ummm... maybe except for the Thomas Cake!

Ingredients:

2.5 cup of sifted plain flour

1tsp baking powder

1tsp salt

2 tbsp cocoa powder

120g butter

1.5 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

30ml red food colouring

1 cup buttermilk

1 tsp white vinegar

1 tsp baking soda

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Grease tin.

2. Sift flour, baking powder, salt, and cocoa together

3. Cream butter and sugar together until fluffy

4. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Mix in vanilla and red colouring

5. Add in 1/2 of the flour mixture, and beat well. Add 1/2 of the buttermilk, then repeat the process.

6. In a small bowl, mix together the vinegar and baking soda (this is the exciting part!!! seeing it fizz!)

7. Add to cake mixture, and pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake for 40min.

a slice of the cake with the melted coloured sugar on top! =(

I have never been really good in slicing the cake horizontally creating layers, I can just never have my knife straight! =( Therefore instead of my original plan of slicing it into 3 layers, I could only get 2 out of it!! Oppsss....

As all the other red velvet cake, I covered it and layered it with cream cheese icing.... Yummmm.... And to make the cake look more interesting, I coloured some of the sugar red, and decorated the cake with it. Good idea for the first 10 minute, but realised that it was bad idea after a while, because the sugar started to melt into the cream cheese icing! =(

Ok... first time failed!!!! Will need to try again!