Baking with Tracey

Yesterday I decided to bake red velvet cupcakes. I have a new recipe book – Bake, by Alison Thompson – and decided that I should test it out.

Here is what you’ll need for the cake.

Ingredients
250g (9oz) unsalted butter (softened)
600g (1lb 5oz) caster sugar
4 eggs
100g (3 1/2oz) cocoa (unsweetened)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
80ml (3 fl oz) liquid red food colouring
400ml (13 1/2 fl oz) buttermilk
600g (1lb 5 oz) plain (all purpose) flour
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
1 tablespoon white vinegar

Preheat oven to 160C or 320F. Line 2 8 inch round cake pans with baking paper.

Using your paddle attachment on the mixer, beat the butter and sugar on high speed for 5 minutes, until pale and creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beating between additions.

In a small bowl, combine the cocoa, vanilla and red food colouring (I ran out of red so had to substitute 30ml of rose pink, it still turned out fine), then add this to the butter mixture.

Mix on low speed to combine well. Add half the buttermilk and half the flour (sifted), mix on low speed, and the rest of the buttermilk and flour, mix on low speed until all combined. Add the bicarb soda and vinegar, beat on medium speed for 2 minutes (make sure you scrape down the sides of the bowl).

Divide the mixture evenly between the two cake tins, and bake for approximately 45 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Mine took about 65 minutes to be properly cooked. Cool in tin for 30 minutes, then turn onto wire rack to cool completely.

To make cupcakes, spoon mixture evenly into 24 cupcake papers in a muffin tray. Bake for about 20 minutes.

For the Cream Cheese Frosting, you will need 2 quantities of this:

Ingredients
125g (4 1/2oz) unsalted butter, softened
250g (9oz) cream cheese, softened
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
600g (1lb 5oz) pure icing sugar

Put butter, cream cheese and vanilla extract in a bowl, sift icing sugar in, beat with paddle attachment on low speed until combined, then on high speed for two minutes.

You can either split the whole cakes into layers and fill each layer with cream cheese frosting, then cover the whole cake with it, or ice the cupcakes individually.

My cake is only two layers because I used half the mixture to make the cupcakes.

 

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