Red Velvet Surprise

This weekend we decided to go to this wonderful little bakery called THE CHOCOLATE.  It is in Orem, Utah and is in a cute old house.  Almost every room is decorated and you can just go explore and find a place to sit.  The cake is to die for, especially the one that is yellow cake with chocolate ganache, loving called "The Husband."  They also have a very good Red Velvet cake and it inspired to me to try to make my own.  A friend was craving and I was needing to bake and this is what happened...

If you have read my blog before you know this, but I like to include the recipes I use and share the love of baking!  For this cake I used a recipe from allrecipes.com that turned out really good.  I used a cup of sour cream instead of a cup of buttermilk.  The batter turned out really thick, but it baked nicely.

Ingredients

1/2 cup shortening

1 1/2 cups white sugar

2 eggs

2 tablespoons cocoa

4 tablespoons red food coloring

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup buttermilk (or sourcream)

2 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar

Directions

Grease two 9 inch round pans.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Cream shortening and 1 1/2 cups sugar WELL.  Add eggs and beat well.

Make a paste of cocoa and red food coloring. Add to creamed mixture.  Mix salt, 1 teaspoon vanilla and buttermilk together.  Add alternately the flour with the milk mixture to the creamed mixture.  Mix soda and vinegar and FOLD INTO CAKE BATTER.  DON'T BEAT OR STIR NOW.

Bake for 30 minutes.

When I baked this, I opened the oven at exactly the wrong time, which is why it sort of fell in the center, but it was not too much of a problem.  I baked these in two 6” pans, which made a smaller, but taller cake.  It just gives a little bit of a different look than 9” pans do.

After the cake cooled, I cut each one in half long ways and stacked and filled them with a cream cheese icing.

Cream Cheese Icing

Ingredients

2 cubes, (or 1 cup) butter

1 8oz package of cream cheese

5 cups powdered sugar

2 – 3 tablespoons milk or cream

1 tsp vanilla

Directions

Cream together the butter and cream cheese.  Mix in the powdered sugar a little at a time and then add the milk or cream and vanilla.  You can add more sugar or more milk depending on how thick you want it.

Mix this on high speed for about 7 minutes.  This is an important part of the frosting process as it will make the frosting fluffy and light.  It will also make it whiter, which just looks nice. 

I love this frosting recipe.  It still has the richness of cream cheese icing, but it also has the fluffy-ness of buttercream so enjoy that!

This cake was small enough that I just spooned the buttercream in between the layers and spread it around.  I then put on a layer of icing to act as a dirty ice.  This catches all the crumbs and keeps the final icing super smooth.

Freeze this, with the crumb coat, for about 15 minutes and then you can add the final layer of icing.  There are a plethora of youtube videos that talk about frosting a cake smoothly with buttercream.  Watch it, love it.

Finally, I just added some of my heart sprinkles.  I got them in a cute little Valentine’s day packaged my mom sent me.  What can I say, she just gets me.  I think it turned out pretty cute and it was easy.  We cut her open and it just looks so beautiful to see that bright red cake and the stark white frosting.  I also had some left over batter so I made a few cupcakes and decorated them with the same sprinkles and icing. 

 I hope y’all love this cake as much as I do.  Happy love week!