Monday 11 February 2013

Red Velvet Cake and another Wedding.

One of my best friends recently tied the knot and as well as being a bridesmaid I was also tasked with making her cake, this consisted of 130 vanilla cupcakes with both pink and white icing and butterfly decorations and then a top cake of Red Velvet cake filled with Cream Cheese frosting and covered in a white roll out fondant.
Jen and her Husband Chris both love superheroes so they also wanted to incorporate this into the topper on the cake as well as with other elements of the wedding such as the table names and the sweet cart. Any way Jen loves Harley Quinn from Batman and she saw a perfect topper idea on the Internet then found a lady who would replicate it in clay resin (I think that's what they're made of right?)

Any way here's the cake.

As you can see some small crafty fingers had already taken a couple of cakes.
And here's the topper:



As there were more cakes than the stand would hold the rest could be stored under the table to top up as guests helped themselves.

Any way as it's almost Valentines and I have have a few orders for red velvet cupcakes as well as a few people asking me about red velvet I thought I'd post the recipe I used for the top cake. As well as for this adorable cup cake (decorated with Red Velvet cake crumbs)



And here's how they're made: (Recipe via Hummingbird cake days)

Makes about 18 large cupcakes (can be easily halved)

Red Velvet Cupcakes

120g Unsalted Butter
300g Caster Sugar
2 large eggs
20g Cocoa Powder
40ml Red food colouring  Note: avoid natural red colourings as this will produce a duller and browner red. I use Silverspoon artificial Red food colour sold in sainsburys or Dr Oetker Red (not natural)
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
300g Plain Flour
1tsp salt
240ml Buttermilk
1tbsp White Wine Vinegar
1tsp Bicarbonate of Soda


Pre heat the oven to 190 degC.
Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy and then add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition until thoroughly mixed.

In a separate bowl, stir together the cocoa powder, food colouring and vanilla to form a paste. Add the paste to the batter and mix until fully incorporated.

Sift together the flour and salt and then add this to the batter in  two batches, alternating with the buttermilk and mixing after each addition.

Finally in another bowl, mix together the vinegar and bicarbonate of soda and mix this into the cake batter.

Line a muffin tin with paper cases and fill. Bake in the oven for 18-20 minutes or until the sponge bounces back when lightly pressed. allow to cool before frosting.

For the icing


100g Unsalted Butter, softened
600g Icing Sugar (I actually used a bit less for a softer icing, more like 400g)
250g Cream cheese (Again I used more like 200g)


Beat the butter and icing sugar with an electric whisk or mixer until you have a sandy consistency. Add the cream cheese and mix until everything is incorporated and the frosting is smooth and fluffy.

Decorate as desired.

For the big top tier of the wedding cake I used this recipe for each layer of the cake (The cake was 2 8" layers and quite deep, so for a smaller cake you may need to use less or divide between shallower tins) with a layer of cream cheese frosting in the centre. As this cake was in the oven for longer I double lined my cake tin both sides and bottom to ensure the sides didn't brown to much and stayed a nice red.

Any way that's all for now, I have quite a few of these cupcake for valentines day orders so I best start my shopping list for ingredients. Let me know if you make these for a loved one!

Bye for now

Cupcake Kris
xx