BBC Radio Scotland joins BBC Radio 5 live. Red Nose Day Recipe
James Morton teaches Bryan Burnett his Red Velvet Cake Recipe for Red Nose Day - Bake along with the boys for Comic Relief.
Red Velvet Cake - For Hungry Red Noses
Ingredients:
- 250g Plain flour, sifted
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 20g Cocoa Powder
- 125g Salted butter, softened (or use unsalted and add a pinch of salt)
- 300g Caster sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract (as posh as you can afford)
- A whole 240ml tub of buttermilk
- Up to 20g red food colouring – if using gel colouring, use a little less
For decoration:
- A packet of shop-bought fondant icing
- 400g icing sugar
- 200g full fat cream cheese
- 100g Butter, very much softened
- A dash more red food colouring
Preheat oven to 170 C (150 fan). Grease and line two 9-inch cake tins (or one high sided tin – if doing this then turn the oven down by 10C)
Sift together the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder in one bowl and mix them to combine.
In a different bowl, beat the butter until it is creamy. Then, add all the sugar and beat them together until as white as you can manage and noticeably fluffy.
Add your two eggs and vanilla and continue to beat until they are well combined and the mixture is consistent throughout.
Add half the buttermilk, the food colouring and half the flour to the bowl and mix very slowly to just combine. Then add in the other half of the dry mix and the rest of the buttermilk. Mix everything very slowly until you’ve got a lovely red colour throughout.
Quickly pour the mix into your tins and get it straight in the oven. If you’re baking it as one big cake, it will take 40-50 minutes. But if you’re baking it as two thinner ones, it will only take 25-30 minutes. Test by poking a knife in and seeing if it comes out clean.
Whilst the cake cools, make the cream cheese icing. Beat together the butter and icing sugar until it is a consistent mixture. Then, add all the cream cheese and beat until totally smooth (a food processor helps with this)
It can help to chill or freeze the cake before at this point. Spread the cooled cake with icing and plop the other layer on top (or cut the single cake in half and spread between the layers).
Then, cover the whole cake with icing and set aside. Roll out nearly all the fondant and cover the cake with it, trimming any excess. Combine the excess and any left over with some red food colouring to make red icing. Use this to cover the cake with little red noses.
