Red(ish) Velvet Cake

So my mum has been bugging me for absolutely AGES to make red velvet cake, so eventually I appeased her constant pleading and made it. Sadly though, I didn't use great quality food dye, so it turned out orangey-red instead, but I didn't mind! I just slapped on some icing so no-one could see, and it tasted great anyways!

Whenever I make a big cake like this, it would never last long enough to be finished, and would go stale, but what my mum does is put half in the freezer and leaves it there until we've eaten all the cake that's out already. And before you all go questioning this, it actually freezes pretty well, even I was surprised!

That's about all I have to say for this week, so I'll get straight to the recipe!

Red(ish) Velvet Cake

Bare Necessities

The Cake

3 1/2cups/350g Plain Flour
1tsp cocoa powder
1tsp Bicarbonate Of Soda
1 1/2tsp Baking Powder
1 1/2cups/350g Caster Sugar
1 1/2cups/350g butter

200ml Milk
1tsp Vanilla Essence
2 eggs
Good Quality Red Food Colouring (I forgot to write down how much it is, but bear in mind that it is a lot, so if you only have about half a little bottle, I would advise getting another one just in case)

The Icing

just under 1/2cup/100g Butter
just under 1cup/200g Cream Cheese
4cups/500g Icing Sugar
1tsp Vanilla Essence 

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/356F.

2. Grease and line three cake tins.

3. In a medium bowl mix the flour, cocoa powder, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder together.

4. Add the sugar, butter and milk and blend.

5. Beat together the vanilla essence and eggs.

6. Add this, drop by drop to the batter, whilst constantly beating the mixture so that it doesn't curdle. 

7. Mix in the food dye bit by bit until it is the colour you want.

8. Pour the batter equally into the three tins.

9. Pop in the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes or until the cake is thoroughly cooked. It may take longer if you've put in LOADS of colouring as to change the consistency.

10. Once the cakes are cooked, take them out of the oven and turn them out onto a cooling rack and leave them until they are completely cool.

11. In another bowl, cream the butter, cream cheese and vanilla essence together.

12. Beat in the icing sugar until it is completely combined. Add more milk or icing sugar until you get the consistency you want. Remember that you want it to be soft enough to spread, but stiff enough so that it won't fall straight off the cake.

9. Roughly split the icing into four. This will help you put even amounts of icing on each section of the cake this will also mean that you will be less likely to run out.

10. Pick the ugliest of your three cakes and place it on a plate.

11. Spread one quarter of the icing on top of it.

12. Place the second cake on top, making sure you save the flattest for last and spread another quarter on top.

13. Now put the last cake on the top and cover the whole outside of the cake with one of the remaining quarters of icing. This will trap the crumbs, so don't worry that it doesn't look great.

14. Put the cake into the fridge to chill for about 5-10 minutes.

15. Take the cake out and spread the rest of the icing over the cake to neaten it up and hide all the crumbs.

16. Slice up and enjoy!