Red Velvet cake advice needed

[OldBeanbagz]

I'm thinking of making one for my friend's birthday party at the weekend. Does anyone have a recipe that works?

I'm planning on making it in 2 tins rather than 3 as that's all i have. Or i could do smaller version in a brownie tin as there's only going to be 8 of us eating it.

So do i need to find food colouring in paste form? Or will liquid do? And does it have to be cream cheese topping? Or would buttercream be ok? Or even chocolate?

You need paste colouring. Liquid colouring will change the taste and texture.

Two layers is fine. Personally I would prefer cream cheese, but I cant see why buttercream or chocolate wouldnt work. Infact choc buttercream might be nice.

i used nigellas red velvet cupcake recipe to make a cake. It worked better than Bea of Bloomsbury's- colour wise anyway. Nigellas used butter, Beas oil. If you can get hold of natural cocoa use that as its far lighter. Mine was made under duress for DD.

i'd defintely go for whitest icing to show up the redness of the cake. Butter cream or cream cheese would both be fine. I wouldn't use chocolate at all for the icing. Red against white is the whole point- if any exists of this cake. oh white chocolate icing would be ok. I used plain buttercream.

Thanks to you both. Is gel the same as paste btw? That's all i could get at the supermarket today.

chocandalmonds did you double up the Nigella recipe so that you could sandwich two cake together?

Not really the same but better than liquid.

You probably need to go to a specialist cake craft shop or order online for paste.

My supermarket doesnt even sell black writing icing, never mind gel so I havent tried the gel.

no- i made a huge giant cupcake so more than double! Hope the cake went down well!

The gel works perfectly fine and you can buy that in most supermarkets these days - use the wrong end of a teaspoon to spoon out about a pea size amount at a time. You really don't need much to make it go super red!

i have tried and failed to make red velvet cake several times. it always ends up brown. i didn't have enough food paste so used some gel. think that id why it didn't work...

Well it work great and was much appreciated by the birthday girl. I did use quite a lot of gel (as the recipe i ended up using stated 1oz of food colour) but it didn't look super red.

Went for buttercream filling/topping but didn't cover the sides as i ran out of icing sugar. I decorated the top with raspberries and red, white & blue sprinkles.

I make red velvet cake with ordinary (cheap) liquid food colouring. Comes out lovely every time. Very red indeed. For DS2 I make blue velvet cake!

I have always used the hummingbird bakery recipe without fail but I use silverspoon red artificial food colouring which gives a vibrant bright red. Unfortunately the natural colourings give a very weak result.
Sounds like you had success with your one though.

I use the hummingbird bakery recipe too. It comes out brilliantly.