I have no link to the South of America, however I’ve always felt an affinity for their cakes such as the Hummingbird and Red Velvet. I even loved the Red Velvet cake so much as we had it as our wedding cake. It was a really toilsome task to find as most cake makers in Sydney had never even heard of it and there was only one cakemaker that was prepared to make it for me. She even gave us a sample of it and whilst it was lovely tasting, it wasn’t quite red enough. She asked me how much redder I wanted it almost disbelievingly, until I told her that I wanted blood red. Thankfully we got our luridly lovely red velvet in the end with striking white icing.
Patisse chess cutters
I bought the little chess cutters at the Peters of Kensington sale. I was delighted to see them reduced from $14 to $4 and when the cashier rang them up they came to a princely sum of $2. It was surely meant to be. So I set about a task of baking a red velvet cake and measuring the squares for the fondant as precisely as possible. It didn’t turn out as red as I wanted as I used colouring gel for this, perhaps its best to use liquid as I’ve certainly had a redder than red velvet cake before and the liquid versus gel was the only difference. From looking at the raw cake batter, there was certainly enough red in it.
Red velvet cake
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 2 eggs
- 60ml red food coloring or food colouring gel (I used Wilton’s Red sans flavour)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 1/2 cups flour-sifted 2-3 times with cocoa below
- 2 tablespoons cocoa
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1 teaspoon bi carb soda
- 1 tablespoons vinegar
Method
1. Cream butter; beat in sugar gradually. Add eggs, one at a time; beat well after each addition. Add food colouring
2. Add salt, flour and cocoa and vanilla alternately with buttermilk, beating well after each addition. Sprinkle soda over vinegar and dissolve throughly; pour vinegar over batter. Stir until thoroughly mixed.
The vividly hued red cake batter-unfortunately it didn’t stay that red!
3. Bake in a large square cake pan for 45 minutes at 175 degrees Celsius. Cool for 10 mins and then turn out onto cooling tray
Decoration:
- 1/2 packet Ready made fondant
- Icing sugar and cocoa
- Brown colouring gel (or you’d do better to buy chocolate fondant)
- smooth Jam (not lumpy fruit filled jam)
Halve fondant and add set aside one quarter of the white fondant to colour with brown colouring later. Take white fondant and roll thinly and then measure your tin. If you want to be precise, Chess boards have 64 squares so divide the dimensions into 8 and make ribbons in the correct measurements and from the ribbons, cut squares. I made a 6×6 chess board and only made
Make chess pieces using remaining 1/3 fondant in brown and white. Try and get them as 3-D as possible
Spread jam onto cake surface to adhere fondant and carefully place square and then place chess pieces on top.
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11 Comments | Add your own
This looks absolutely fantastic! I am a huge fan of red velvet too. what food colouring do you use? when i bake red velvet the batter comes out really red even when baked. gosh, thinking about that…maybe mine’s really toxic and dangerous…gulp!
Hi airy fairy-Thanks!
for this one I used the Wilton colouring Gel in red without the flavouring but when I used regular liquid colouring in Pillarbox red here they turned our vivid red! So I suppose that liquid colouring works better than gel!
wow that is so creative!! beautiful cake..I love red velvet too..it’s soo smooth and rich…
Hi Alexandra-Thankyou!
Isn’t Red Velvet just the best? 
Our local Safeway (Woolworths) did a red velvet cake for part of 2006/07 But I haven’t seen it in about 6 months. It was nearly $7.. and came with a cream-cheese-ish like white frosting. I really liked it.. but I wondered how close to the real thing it was!?
You have done brilliantly with yours.. A chess board too.. well done, I’m impressed!
Hi Maria-I did see it in store too but never got the chance to buy it. I’m not sure, their chocolate mud cakes aren’t really mud cakes at all so I am not sure how closely they would follow the Red Velvet recipe. It did look the right colour though!
Thanks so much
i must admit that i really like the deep red colour of your cake. in the past when i have made red velvet cupcakes with the liquid colouring i’ve gotten some weird looks and i can see thoughts flashing through people’s minds…’is this gonna turn my mouth red???’ hee hee…perfect for halloween parties, of course, but perhaps not spohisticated dinner parties!!!!
Hi airy fairy-Thanks! I was a bit disappointed when we cut into it at the restaurant although like you said, some people might freak out if its totally red. As it was with this deep red, a lot of people said “Oooh its so red” and I was thinking “Umm not really as red as I wanted it!”
hi not quite nigella. I love red velvet cake, found out about them last year from a conversation, I made one for my mum’s 60th birthday as with her chinese background I thought it a fitting cake, I used pillar box red too and it came out blood red. I also layered the cake so it looks stunning with the white butter icing between.
Hi Tashette-Great idea! What a nice daughter you are
I think liquid Pillar Box red yields a perfect colour but I haven’t been very happy with the Wilton colour gels that I’ve been using (which I used for this cake). They fade very quickly in fondant and fade when baked too so I think I’d better find another brand of better colouring gel. Red Velvet looks so stunning with the white icing between the layers-your mum must have been very pleased!
I am looking for the Patisse cookie cutters. I have had no luck finding them. Where can I purchase them? I need that miniature size. I have many cookie cutters from this company already and enjoy them greatly. Please help.
Sincerely,
in need of cutters
North Little Rock, AR
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