Eggless Red Velvet Cake

Red velvet cake is a velvety cake which gets it deep red colour from the mild amount of cocoa powder in the batter along with the red colouring either natural colour like beetroot or by using artificial red liquid colour or gel colour. Its made mostly during Valentine’s day or during Christmas.

Red velvet cake had been in my to-do list since a very long time. The main reason why I was a bit hesitant to bake this was the usage of artificial colour. I confess that I had tried to make cupcakes using raw beetroot puree and though I ended up with a beautiful red colour, we didnt like the taste of it (it really tasted like beetroot) and for the first time in my life, I had to throw something that I baked 🙁

I had tried to buy Ameri red gel colour, but it was never in stock whenever I went to buy them. Finally, few days back, my sister gave me an imported red food colour along with many other baking related stuffs. So when my cousin and family decide to visit us over the weekend, I decided to try out this red velvet cake. My cousin’s son’s birthday is tomorrow and so Neha wanted me to bake a cake when they visited me so that we can have a small pre birthday celebration here. Kids loved the cake immensely and relished it a lot. Since I do not bake frosted cakes that often, I am extremely nervous when it comes to frosting and thereby struggle a lot to achieve a neat finish. I had thought of some other design in my mind and ended up with a totally different design 🙂 Practice is the only way to achieve neat finish in a cake, no matter how many videos you watch.

I am updating the recipe a bit. Was not very happy with the cornflour added to the cake batter. So modified the recipe a bit and loved the taste. I have used a 240 ml cup.

Ingredients:

• All purpose flour 175 gm
• Cocoa powder 10 gm
• Salt a pinch
• Sugar 150 gm
• Baking powder 1/2 tsp
• Baking soda 1/4 tsp
• Vanilla extract 1 tsp
• Oil 60 ml (1/4 cup)
• Melted butter 50 ml
• Milk 180 ml (1/2 cup)
• Apple cider vinegar 1.5 tsp
• Red food colour as required
• Whipping cream 400-500 ml
• Dilute sugar syrup 100 ml

Method:

• Preheat the oven at 150-160 degree Celsius for ten minutes.
• Grease a seven inch or eight inch cake tin with butter and dust it with flour. Tap out the excess flour.
• Sieve the all purpose flour, cocoa powder, salt and the rising agents 3-4 times.
• Add the vinegar to the milk and stir it well. Keep it aside for five minutes to make the buttermilk.
• Now powder the sugar and add it to the buttermilk. Add the oil and melted butter to it.
• Mix everything well to get a homogeneous mixture. Now add the vanilla extract and stir.
• Add the red colour according to the colour you desire. If its a good gel colour, add a few drops. I had a red colour gifted by my sister and I used 3/4 teaspoon of it to get a good colour.
• Slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry mixture and fold it gently.
• Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin. Tap the tin gently to remove air bubbles if any.

• Bake the cake in the middle rack of your oven for 30-32 minutes or till a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.

• Remove the tin from the oven and cool for 3-4 minutes.
• Transfer the cake from the tin onto a wire rack and cool it well.

• I doubled the recipe and made two such cakes.
• Once the cake is fully cooled, wrap it with a cling film and chill it in the fridge overnight or for few hours.
• Transfer your whipping cream from the freezer into the refrigerator shelf for 5-6 hours.
• Chill the bowl in which you will whip the cream and the blades of the beater in the freezer for few minutes.
• Measure the required quantity of the cream into the chilled bowl. Make sure there are no ice crystals in the cream.
• Whip the cream till you get stiff peaks. This will take arounnd 4-6 minutes.

• Remove the chilled cakes from the refrigerator and slice each cake horizontally into 2 halves.
• Crumble one half of the cake and spread it on a baking tray lined with parchment paper and bake it at around 100 degree Celsius for 10-15 minutes till the crumbs are dry.
• Make a dilute sugar syrup with 2-3 tablespoon of sugar mixed with water.
• Soak the 3 slices in sugar syrup and fill the layers with the whipped cream.
• Do the crumb coating of the cake with the cream and chill for few minutes.
• Frost it neatly with the cream and decorate with the cream and the dry crumbs of the cake.
• Chill for few hours for the cream to set fully.
• Thaw the cake for few minutes and then serve it.

Notes:

• Generally the red velvet cake is frosted with cream cheese or ermine frosting.
• Beat the cream cheese till it is soft and then fold it in whipped cream or butter cream and then use this to frost the cake.
• Added on 4th Sept 2018. I had made this again on 4th April 2018 for Neha’s birthday. So thought of sharing that image too here.