A cake recipe and a frosting Tutorial

Hmmm, what on earth might I be making? With my darling hubby's birthday tomorrow, what cake does he request? Let's see if you can guess. HUGE hint front and center...

Ohhhh, red velvet cake: you little Christmas-temptress of the dessert table. Actually, I take that back. As I told my sweet love tonight, red velvet cake is probably not in my top 15 most beloved desserts. But it is beautifully Christmassy and vivid red, and (one of) my husband's favorite desserts. (It must be said that when it comes to sweets I bake, Hubby has a pretty complex classification system. To that end, they're all the favorite of one class: the favorite pie, the favorite fruit dessert, the favorite dessert that doubles as breakfast, the favorite chocolate cake...Perhaps this is his favorite red cake?)

Let's get crackin' - turn your oven on to 350*F and prepare 3 or 4 cake pans. Spray them with baking spray (such as Baker's Joy or Pam for Baking), line them with parchment/wax paper, and then spray them again. You could also hand-grease them with crisco, but spraying almost always works perfectly for me.

(I hate, hate, hate cutting out parchment and wax paper to line pans with. But here's how I do it, in case you - like yours truly - don't feel like shelling out for parchment rounds.) Roll out a length of paper and lay your cake pan down at the topmost corner; draw around the edge with a pencil. Then slide your pan down and over, to the bottom-most edge and as close as possible to your first circle to cut down on waste; draw around it. Repeat by sliding over and up for your third circle.

Cut between your circles, then fold them in fourths (hold them up to the light to make sure your lines match up) and cut along the line. Unfold and it's perfect - ready to go!

Next, I like to prep everything before I get going. So measure out your flour (2.5 cups) and 1 teaspoon each of salt and baking soda. Want another little tip? I'm full of them tonight. :)

When you use up all of a can of baking powder, gently remove the label and carefully (and quickly!!) wash it out and let dry. Fill with salt, and voila - such an easier way to measure out spoons of salt for recipes. Just dip and scoop, then use the built-in metal lid to scrape off the top and level your measuring spoons, just like you do for baking powder.

Okay, so mix your dry ingredients together. You could sift them together, but I must confess I do not. I just dump them together and then stir it all with a whisk for about 15 seconds.

Next, in a glass cup or bowl, measure out 2 tsp cocoa powder. (You can make them heaping. I promise I won't tell.) To this add an entire 1 oz. bottle of red food coloring and mix well. Add 1 tsp vinegar and stir well.

In a mixer, cream together 1.75 cups EACH of cooking oil and sugar. Add 2 eggs and mix well.

Add your red mixture and mix well. Into the same measuring cup, I poured 1 cup of buttermilk. Add flour mixture and buttermilk to cake batter, alternating and beginning and ending with flour mixture. Add 1 tsp vanilla and mix well.

Divide batter between your pans and cook for 25-30 minutes.

Okay, here's where to trust your common sense instead of directions. So clearly, the directions say 25-30 minutes. I arranged my pans in the oven and set the timer for 10 minutes, so I could rotate them. Then cooked for another 9 minutes, and went to rotate the pans again and lookie here...

The cake had already pulled away from the edge of the pan, which means these babies were done after only 19 minutes! Let cool in pans for about 10 minutes, then rest of the way on racks.

For frosting, combine in mixer two 8 oz. blocks of cream cheese, 1.5 sticks (12 tablespoons, or 6 oz.) butter, 2 tsp vanilla, and 2 pounds (2 boxes) of 10x sugar, and assemble your cake.

Okay, so here begins the real tutorial part of this recipe.

Let's get this straight: homemade cakes are not hard. We all can follow directions! :) But sometimes homemade goodies are...trouble. And then we feel like we don't have tons to show for our efforts, right? So we want a homemade cake to look as good as it's going to taste. Sort of like with sewing, you don't want things to look homemade in the sorta sad way, haha. :)

While I am nowhere near the talent of my sweet SIL Marcie, I do have a few tips for making cakes not look so homely-homemade. Almost none of which I did tonight. First, you can level your layers using a long, serrated knife. This helps your cake be level and flat when you assemble it, and helps prevent "quakes". Alternately, you could invert some of the layers, which I did for the bottom and top layer of this cake.

Second, make a crumb coat!

All I mean by a "crumb coat" is a thin layer of frosting (icing? I don't know the difference) that you apply and let dry/set completely. This layer catches any loose crumbs on the surface of the cake layers, so that you don't have dark flecks of cake visible in your light-colored frosting. So in the photo you see above, I had assembled my cake and done a thin crumb coat using about half the cream cheese frosting. Then I stuck it in the fridge uncovered for a few hours (unnecessarily long, but this spanned supper, bath, and bedtime for the children) to let the frosting set and harden.

The other alternative to a crumb coat in a dark-cake-and-light-frosting situation is to add something to the frosting, like chopped pecans.

Okay, so let's say you've made a crumb coat, though. Next, apply a gracious plenty frosting to tops and sides (but you shouldn't use all of it for a 3-layer; perhaps a 4 layer would need it all). I'm not super skilled in photography, so the colors don't show up that great, but let's take a look:

Not awful, right? Probably looks a lot like cakes your grandmother made.

Not nearly as pretty as those dry, mostly-flavorless, but gorgeous cakes in the bakery department of your local grocery store.

Alright, let's beautify this thing a little bit. There are a couple of different ways I do this, but for a red velvet cake, this is my favorite design.

Grab a small spoon from your regular flatware and dip it in the remaining frosting in your mixing bowl. Using the tip of the back of the spoon, draw little circles, semi-circles, and swoops in the frosting...

Using a spoon makes a more gentle swirl than the tip of a knife or offset spatula, although it's still possible to accidentally gouge too deeply into your cake, so use a light touch here. :) Your swirls might develop peaks (like merengue); leave 'em if you like them, gently work them down if you don't. Work around the sides and up to and across the top, going back when needed and overlapping swoops and swirls.

Ahhh, swirly, curly cakes make me smile. :) Now, clearly, this isn't going to win any prizes for its looks or anything, but the swirls cover up the mishmash, impossible to get perfectly smooth frosting look of just covering the cake and calling it a day.

Your favorite red cake, just for you, Babe: Happy Birthday. For your present, I put a picture of you in pajamas on our family blog. :D

Red Velvet Cake

2.5 c flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 tsp cocoa

1 bottle red food color

1 tsp vinegar

1.75 c oil

1.75 c sugar

2 eggs

1 c buttermilk

1 tsp vanilla

Sift together first three ingredients. In a non-porous bowl or cup, combine next three ingredients. In mixer, cream together oil and sugar; add eggs and mix well. Add red mixture. Add flour mixture to batter in 3 additions, alternating with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour. Add vanilla. Bake in 3 or 4 prepared pans at 350 for 25-30 minutes.

Cream Cheese Frosting

2 - 8 oz blocks cream cheese

1.5 sticks (12 tbsp) butter

2 pounds (2 boxes or 1 large bag) confectioners (10X) sugar

2 tsp vanilla

Allow cream cheese and butter to come to room temperature. Cream together; add sugar in small increments; add vanilla. Beat well - should be slightly fluffy. Assemble cake.