Cake it away

A baker I am not.

I've known this for a couple of years now, but keen to forever broaden my skill base and practise my baking for the next CWA fete (you never know when the FWAW producers will call me up again!), I decided to tackle a firm favourite for dear Em's birthday.

When looking for something impressive, delicious and relatively easy, you can't go past the Hummingbird Bakery Red Velvet cake.

O.M.G. Three tiers of heavenly sponge smothered in cream cheese icing.

To. Die. For. Actually, I think I'm in a sugar coma as I type this.

So, I got baking on the weekend in readiness for our traditional Monday Night TV session at darling Cat's house.

MNTV deserves a whole post of its own, so I won't go in to detail now, but it was worthy of a decadent dessert, especially with a birthday on the cards.

Isn't the red in the first picture gorgeous? So glossy - the world's prettiest batter, for sure.

And don't you LOVE my Mum's old school mixmaster. Vintage without even knowing it!

Thank you Bree for my Donna Hay icing spatula thingy-ma-jig. I felt like such the professional smoothing it all out!

One layer down . . .

And then there were three.

Turns out I didn't use enough icing between the layers - not enough white to break up the red aesthetically. It was all a bit too block colour.

Pretty!

The birthday girl making her wish.

And delivering the first slice - what a disappointment with the layering.

Was it Dave Dobbyn who sang about a 'slice of heaven'. He knew his stuff, that Kiwi!

Not 'Donna Hay magazine front cover' worthy, but the girls were impressed. Some even went back for seconds (not mentioning any names, Anna!)

So there you have it, my first attempt at a Red Velvet Cake. The cupcakes are definitely easier, but I'll try this again for sure - the texture of the cake is an absolute winner, it's a never fail recipe.

To translate the cupcake mixture to cake quantity, simply double it and cook the three cakes in 20cm round cake tins for 25 minutes. Double the icing mixture aswell.

Mum's birthday is next (not til April) and I think I'll attempt a hummingbird one for that - you know, pineapple, carrot, the works.

Anything but peach muffins!