RED VELVET CAKE (RECIPE 1) / KITKAT & M&M CAKE (FAIL)
So my girl Soraya had her birthday last weekend a few colleagues and I thought it would be good idea to do a small party for her. As we were talking about this I was “bright” enough to offer to bake the cake for the birthday as I had been wanting to try two things of late 1. A red velvet cake 2. A kit kat cake. This was overly ambitious of me I think seeing as for one I had made neither before and secondly offering to “decorate” a cake that will be viewed in public is quite a challenge to ones ego. I regretted having offered several times but what else was I do to with time ticking there was not much to do as I couldn’t just pull out and it was a bit late to order for cake from Nairobi so I decided to go on and keep my offer. Since I did not have the kitkats and M&Ms to go with the kitkat cake we called our colleague Allan and asked him to go to the supermarket to get us the chocolates and this proved to be quite a challenge, Allan, being the man he is, called me like 3 times trying to figure out what exactly I wanted and this was quite the task, it was like trying to explain to a man the difference between pink and fuschia!!! (no pun intended 🙂 ) even after we talked he still managed to bring me the smaller sized kit kats (which I did appreciate coz it was the effort that counted) in a panic my girl Mona and I begun to wonder what we would do but we decided to ask another male colleague who did not even know what kit kats were and he this time brought us the chunky ones!!! I was doomed and frustrated. All in all I still got complements because we were in the desert and anything goes here but i feel that this (kitkat cake) project was an utter fail and I will have to redo it again.
For the cake I actually enjoyed it. Every one who ate it was quite happy with the out come. I tried two different recipes, I will post the other next week. I think people equally liked both.
My pal who is not a fun of chocolate cakes actually liked this one because it was not that rich, the chocolate flavour is present but very distant and the cake is very moist because of the oil used. However, because of the amount of cocoa used the red in this cake is not as rich and it turns out to be more maroonish. So if your after color next weeks recipe might be the one to go for. Or try both see what tickles your fancy. HAPPY BAKING!
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
- 3 1/2 cups cake flour
- 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 2 cups oil (vegetable will do)
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 6 tablespoons (3 ounces) red food coloring or 1 teaspoon red powder food coloring dissolved in 6 tablespoons of water
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1 1/4 cup buttermilk
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 2 1/2 teaspoons white vinegar
- you will need 36 Kitkat sticks to fill up this cake and not end up with the disaster I had, i should have crossed checked this
- about 1-1 ½ cups of M&MS
- 1 cup unsalted butter softened
- 3 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder
- 1/2 teaspoon table salt
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 4 tablespoons milk
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place teaspoon of butter in each of 3 round 9-inch layer cake pans and place pans in oven for a few minutes until butter melts. Remove pans from oven, brush interior bottom and sides of each with butter and line bottoms with parchment.
Whisk cake flour, cocoa and salt in a bowl.
Place oil and sugar in bowl of an electric mixer and beat at medium speed until well-blended.
Beat in eggs one at a time. With machine on low, very slowly add red food coloring. (Take care: it may splash.) Add vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk in two batches. Scrape down bowl and beat just long enough to combine.
Place baking soda in a small dish, stir in vinegar and add to batter with machine running. Beat for 10 seconds.
Divide batter among pans, place in oven and bake until a cake tester comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes. Let cool in pans 20 minutes. Then remove from pans, flip layers over and peel off parchment. Cool completely before frosting.
Cream butter for a few minutes in a mixer with the paddle attachment on medium speed. Turn off the mixer. Sift 3 cups powdered sugar and cocoa into the mixing bowl. Turn your mixer on the lowest speed (so the dry ingredients do not blow everywhere) until the sugar and cocoa are absorbed by the butter. Increase mixer speed to medium and add vanilla extract, salt, and milk and beat for 3 minutes. If your frosting needs a more stiff consistency, add a little more sugar. If your frosting needs to be thinned out, add additional milk 1 tablespoon at a time.
Frost the 1st cake layer. Set the 2nd layer on top of the first. Frost the 2nd layer and along the sides of the cake too.
Stick Kit Kat’s to the sides of the cake, leaving a very small space in between each Kit Kat (1/4-inch).
Wrap a bow around the cake, securing the Kit Kat’s. Fill the top of the cake with M&M’s.
If you refrigerate the cake for a couple of hours or so, it will be much easier to cut and serve. HAPPY EATING!!!
This recipe makes 2-3 cake layers (depending on how big you want each individual cake, i made 2
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RED VELVET CAKE (RECIPE 2) | foodieinthedesert June 22, 2012 at 12:07 PM
[…] last Friday I posted my KitKat Red Velvet Cake. The cake was for my gals Soraya’s birthday and at some point I thought that the main cake might […]