Red Velvet Cake
with cream cheese Swiss meringue buttercream
My parents have been visiting me and Franny in London for the last few weeks, and it’s been so wonderful that I wanted to do something special to celebrate. A few months ago Franny had wanted a Red Velvet cake, and not wanting to make one I bought one. It was a bit of a letdown, so this time I decided I’d dust off all the versions I’d made over the years and get it right. There is a version of this in The Violet Bakery Cookbook, and there are quite a few others in the Violet Cakes archives, but this one is new.
All of them are based on the handwritten recipe from my Granny Ptak, my dad’s mom, which hangs pride of place next to the counter at Violet, but I’m always tweaking it. I’m not using Crisco in mine. I wrote all about my Granny Ptak and her impact on my baking before on this substack.
Mother's Day
The other day my daughter Frances and I were having breakfast – I’d made waffles – and listening to Radio 4. There was a feature about a bakery in France who were making vegan croissants without butter and Frances sighed so deeply, and said “I just couldn’t live in an environment without butter”. Thankfully, she lives in an environment full of butter – …
To make this, you will need a few bits of equipment - check out my essentials here - particularly a stand mixer. Swiss Meringue Buttercream is amazing but it can take a long time and I would never recommend doing it by hand. The other unusual bits you’ll need are
Natural cocoa powder (not the more typical Dutched variety), which hasn’t been alkalised and has a much lighter colour and brighter flavour. In the UK you can get this at organic or whole foods shops fairly easily, or you can order it online.
Food colouring paste, I used Sugarflair Ruby to make this. Liquid food colourings often are too weak to add enough colour without using several bottles, and adding that much liquid affects the texture of the final cake. Be aware that these pastes are concentrated, and they will say on them how much you should use. If you add too much, there can be a chemical flavour in the finished bake.
Tapioca flour, not that unusual if you’ve made many of my recipes before, but you might have to wander a little further afield than the supermarket to get it. If you have access to cake flour you can just use 290g of that, instead of the plain flour and tapioca mix.
Red Velvet Cake
Makes one 8” cake, to serve 12-20
