Red Velvet

 I never used to understand the fascination with Red Velvet Cake. To be honest, the very idea of adding food colouring to the batter wasn’t something I was ready to embrace. I experimented many times with recipes that insisted it wasn’t necessary. Given the right acidity/alkalinity – isn’t that called the ph – the theory is you can draw the red out of the cocoa and produce a perfectly natural version.

That may be true but whilst I was busy wasting ingredients, pouring money and cake batter down the drain, other bakers were busy making and selling cakes of such glorious deep red beauty that I simply *had* to join the party.

As I baked my first classic Red Velvet cake – adding the sugarflair paste to the cocoa and watching the dark brown powder take on a rich red hue –  I became strangely excited! But following the recipe I could also see that something else magical was going to take place.

The recipe called for a healthy quantity of buttermilk, and right at the end of mixing the batter a teaspoonful of bicarb and tablespoon of white vinegar is stirred through. This is where my fascination with food science is delighted to see the batter bubbling as it is filled with air and lifted. It must then be poured into tins – or in this cake loafkins cases – and placed into the oven before it is too late to capture this incredible reaction.

Twenty minutes later and here we have these gorgeous naked beauties!

What is so special about the cake? What’s not would be a better question. Moist, flavoursome and appetisingly deep red.

Topped with Vanilla Buttercream or Cream Cheese Frosting and sprinkled with freeze dried raspberry flakes – a huge hit at a recent fundraising Quiz Night!

Many thanks to the fabulously gifted Helen Daniels for the great photos!

£2.95 each – treat yourself!