Red Velvet

Ingredients:

For the cake:

– 225 g of special pastry flour

– 225 g of lukewarm whole milk

– 1 tablespoon of cream-based red food dye

– 140 g fractionated butter ointment (at room temperature)

– 275 g of table sugar

– 15 g lemon juice or apple cider vinegar

– 4 eggs

– 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

– 15 g (one sachet approx) of baking powder

– (optional) 20 g of pure cocoa powder

For the filling:

– 250 g of fractionated butter

– 300 g of icing sugar

– 500 g of “Philadelphia” style cheese

Cooking method:

1- We start with the sponge cake. We add the lemon juice or vinegar to the whole milk and set it aside.

2- We beat the eggs with the sugar until they are bleached (best to use a food mixer), and without stopping beating we mix in the butter and vanilla extract. We keep beating for about 5 more minutes.

3- We sift together the flour, yeast, and cocoa, if we opt for a somewhat more intense flavour for the cake and set it aside.

4- We thoroughly blend the dye into the milk.

5- -Using a kneading motion with a spatula, we add a third of the flour mixture to the bowl with the eggs until it is perfectly absorbed. Then we add half of the milk to the same bowl and mix until the results are homogeneous. We add another third of the flour and mix them. Then using the rest of the milk, we blend it in followed finally by the rest of the flour. That is to say, we add the milk and flour in 5 steps ensuring we do not move on from one step to the next until we have not perfectly integrated the mixture every time.

The dough does not have to be very smooth. If it looks “mottled” that is no big deal; after baking, it will be perfect.

6- In a mould measuring about 20/22 cm in diameter we place about 270 g of the dough and bake it at 180 ºC for approximately 18 minutes, or until it appears dry when stabbed with a needle or wooden skewer in the middle. We repeat this step 3 times if we have a single mould, cooling and greasing it well each time until we get 3 biscuits that are about 2 or 3 cm thick that we will let cool completely on a grill rack.

With the rest of the dough fill some muffin moulds and bake them for about 22 minutes.

7- For the filling beat the fractionated butter with the icing sugar until it whitens and froths up a lot for about 8 or 10 minutes. We add the well-chilled cheese and continue beating it until it is well mixed in without any lumps. We set aside about 150 g of filling to garnish the cupcakes.

8- We alternate a layer of sponge cake topped with a layer of filling with the aid of a spatula or with a pastry bag until you end up with all the elements and keep the cake in the fridge for about 30 minutes before serving.

9- For the muffins, we paint some vertical stripes on the inside of a pastry sleeve with the cream dye in the colour that we want. We add the cream cheese filling that we had set aside and decorate the muffins with the filling just like in the photo.

Note: This cake is a real delight, very addictive.

* If we bake it whole, we need to lower the temperature to 165 ºC just at the time of blending the mould with the dough and keep it for 35 minutes. If when pricking it with a needle or wooden skewer in the centre it comes out wet, we bake it for 5 more minutes.

* It is important to store it well covered at room temperature if we do not fill it.

Photos and recipe: cocinaDsastre.