This cake, after weeks of preparation including reading recipes from mentors and watching a ton of YouTube videos, turned out to be beyond what I imagined I could accomplish. I truly believe that I baked THE PERFECT CAKE.
Red velvet was a wild fad about 20 years ago and everyone was going nuts for red velvet cup cakes, cakes and whatever else they could get their hands on, but it seems to be making a strong come back.
As I detailed in Claire's Crazy Cakes - Chapter 84 - The Red Velvet Experiment- part 1For my Son's 13 birthday, we flipped through tons of birthday cake ideas from full on Minecraft scenes to other themed cakes, but he said that he didn't want a themed birthday cake this year. He is a teenager now and wanted a grownup cake. Oh, be still my heart!!
So together, cuddling under the duvet, we settled on this idea of an Oreo stuffed red velvet cake. Now while I have certainly worked with Oreos in cake before, I have never made a red velvet cake in my life and honestly, I haven't tried a new cake recipe since finding the vanilla one about 3 years ago.
I must say, if I may take the liberty of doing so, that I absolutely NAILED it! This despite some er, hiccups along the way which I detailed in the last post Claire's Crazy Cakes - Chapter 86- Insanely Great Ideas and Colossal Flops! - Part 3
Anyway, I did promise that if I got this right, I would share the final recipe and method for this glorious cake.
It was a work of art and worth the enormous smile I received from my gorgeous child <3
For The Cake:
Tools:
2 Separate bowls for mixing dry and wet ingredients together
A sieve - usually I skip this part, but wanting my cake to be perfect and dealing with lumpy cocoa and castor sugar made it unskippable, this time round.
A large wooden spoon
Several tablespoons and teaspoons
An electric beater
3 x 26 cm springform tins
Baking paper
Spray and cook
Something heavy for crushing Oreos - (a wine bottle?)
A fork
Piping bag and French tip nozzle
Preheat the oven to 180 ° Celsius
A large 30cm Cake board
Ingredients:
Although I usually stick to English measurements, the below are AMERCAN cup sizes. It is essential to know that there is a HUGE difference and getting it wrong can hugely impact your cake, and not in a good way.
Ingredients for the Cake:
- 1 cup oil
- 1 1/2 cups of buttermilk ( I replaced the sourcream in the original recipe with extra buttermilk and still had some left over, which I added to the frosting later on.)
- 3 large eggs
- vanilla essence
- 1 tsp white vinegar
- red gel food colouring (gel food colouring is ESSENTIAL to achieving that deep royal red that you want for your Red Velvet sponge. Don't worry if it looks very bright before you add the cocoa. This will also deepen the colour.)
- 2 1/2 cups castor sugar -sieved
- 3 cups all purpose flour - sieved
- 2 heaped tbspoons cocoa - sieved
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp fine salt
Method: Red Velvet Cake Sponge
preheat oven to 180 ° Celsius
Line and grease 3 baking tins (make sure they're all the same size). Although I use spring form non-stick pans and spray and cook, I use baking paper as well. I carry with me, the trauma of a cake sticking to the base of a tin and I will never make that mistake again!!
In a large bowl, whisk together 1 cup oil, 1 1/2 cups buttermilk, 3 large eggs, vanilla essence, white vinegar and a generous amount of red food colouring, mix until combined and evenly coloured
before adding cocoa:
After adding cocoa:
Note the difference in the colour!
Add 2 1/2 cups castor sugar and whisk on high for 30 seconds to dissolve sugar
Mix in 3 cups of flour, 2 tbsp cocoa , 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp baking soda and one tsp salt. DO NOT OVERMIX!!
At this point, the vinegar and the baking soda will have started reacting together and you will notice fine bubbles appearing in the cake batter. This is EXCELLENT and means your chemistry experiment is working! These fie bubbles will also contribute to the fluffy texture of the cake once baked.
Divide batter equally between the 3 prepared baking tins
Bake for 40 minutes
Remove pans from oven and allow cakes to cool in the tins completely before removing. A sudden drop in temperature can cause a perfectly risen cake layer to flop in on itself, so reducing head gradually is really important.
Test that the cake layers are baked through by inserting a skewer into the middle of the cake. If it comes out clean, it's ready, if not, you'll need to return the tin to the oven.
Once you are satisfied that your cake layers are baked through , and the cooling process is complete, remove the outer ring of the spring form tins. I left the layers stored on the bases and in the baking paper until I was ready to build and decorate my cake.
When you have your frosting ready and you want to build your cake, make sure you place the layers in fridge for about an AT LEAST hour (cakes must be cooled naturally to room temperature before placing in the fridge). This makes them easier to ice and stack.
I cleared out my whole fridge for this cake🤣🤣🤣
Cream cheese/ Buttercream Icing Ingredients
- Beat 350g butter and the tub of cream cheese on medium for 30 seconds
- add 1 vanilla essence and 1/2 teaspoon salt/ Beat on low till combined
- slowly mix in the 8 cups of icing sugar and add little bits of cream to make mixing easier. I also had to pre-sift this as it was also lumpy.
- If it's too thick, we can add cream, if its to thin, add icing sugar
cover with plastic and refrigerate for an hour
Cream cheese/ Buttercream Icing Method
Lay the cakes out on a level surface and use a serrated knife to cut along the outside of the cake, removing wrinkles left behind by the baking paper and level the cake layers. This part may seem heart breaking at first, but you will use this leftover cake for decorative purposes later (Although I'd be lying if I said I didn't munch some of it)
Crumble the tops you cut off and set aside/ refrigerate for decorating later.
Red Velvet, Oreo and Icing Assembly
stack and frost the cake layers on a cake board, using a good dab of icing on the board to help the cake stick to the board to prevent it from moving around while icing.
Add even layers of cream cheese icing and crushed Oreos between layers
add a thin coat of icing to cover the whole cake (crumb coat) and refrigerate. till firm to the touch.
Add a second layer of cake frosting and smooth. Repeat with a third layer, but in retrospect, also ensure that you leave enough icing for piping the rosettes onto the top and the base of the cake, right at the end.
Carefully press the crushed Oreos and red velvet crumbs along the bottom of the cake, using your hand. You can also add crushed Oreos and crumbled cake to the top of the cake. Return the cake to the fridge for further setting.
The half ganache and half ream cheese/ buttercream Rosettes:
This was a happy accident that turned out to be glorious. I had very little cream cheese icing left over, and needed to come up with a plan B for decoration after my cake pops failed miserably.
I ended up making white chocolate ganache, made by gently heating chopped white chocolate over boiling water and adding the remaining cream from the cream cheese frosting, which I coloured red with my gel and when it reached the right temperature, which is tricky as it needs to be runny enough to pipe, but not to warm as to melt the cream cheese frosting. This is the first time I have piped buttercream and ganache together, and it worked BEAUTIFULLY, both flavor-wise and aesthetically.
Pipe large rosettes around the top of the cake and add whole Oreos for decoration. Pipe smaller rosettes around the base of the cake. Return to the fridge until you are ready to serve!
It took us about 4 days to demolish the whole cake. Here is the cake board, licked completely clean!
