Red Velvet Cake

A well-loved recipe, with a delicious twist in the tale!

📝 Ingredients

• 1 1/2 C (350 g) Sasko Cake Flour
• 1 1/2 C (300 g) sugar
• 1 tsp (5 ml) bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp (5 ml) baking powder
• 4 tsp (20 ml) cocoa powder
• 1 tsp (5 ml) salt
• 1 C (250 ml) buttermilk
• 1 1/2 C (375 ml) canola oil
• 1 tsp (5 ml) vinegar
• 1 tsp (5 ml) vanilla essence
• red food colouring (until batter has a nice red colour, gel colouring is about 2 tsp)
• 2 large eggs
• Cream cheese icing
• 100 g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 200 g icing sugar, sifted
• 1 tsp (5 ml) vanilla essence
• 250 g cream cheese
• Swiss Meringue topping
• 3 egg whites
• 125 g castor sugar

👨‍🍳 Instructions

1. 1Preheat the oven to 160 C. Lightly grease two cake tins with a 22 cm diameter.
2. 2Sift all the dry ingredients together into a mixing bowl.
3. 3In a separate bowl, mix the buttermilk, oil, vinegar, vanilla essence and food colouring together. Lightly beat the eggs and add them to the wet ingredients. Mix well.
4. 4Now combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients and mix until combined.
5. 5Pour the batter into the prepared cake tins and bake for 1 hour. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.
6. 6Cream the butter and icing sugar together and add the vanilla essence. Add the cream cheese and beat together (take care not to overbeat as this causes the cream cheese to become runny).
7. 7Sandwich the cakes together with half the icing and use the other half to ice the top of the cake
8. 8--- Swiss Meringue topping ---
9. 9Separate the egg whites into a spotlessly clean metal or glass bowl.
10. 10Add the castor sugar.
11. 11Place the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water (the bowl must not touch the water as you don’t want the eggs to scramble).
12. 12Whisk gently until the sugar has dissolved (you can test this by rubbing the mixture between two fingers, it should be smooth with no more sugar granules)
13. 13Remove from the heat and beat with electric beater, slowly at first, for 2 minutes and then on high speed for about 4-5 minutes until the mixture becomes glossy and stiff
14. 14Roughly pile onto the cake and smooth over with a palette knife.
15. 15The icing can be left at this stage but it looks lovely if scorched very gently with a blowtorch to caramelise the meringue.