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I’m always amazed at lit­tle ones!  How in the world did my then 4yo daugh­ter decide she wanted to learn to play the vio­lin?  While being exposed to lots of music I cer­tainly hadn’t sug­gested she learn to play an instru­ment let alone a clas­si­cal one.  No wor­ries we got her started and away she went with gusto…  Well this post isn’t about music but recently I was asked by my friends to make their 3yo daugh­ter a birth­day cake. Appar­ently she had requested “a rasp­berry on the inside” birth­day cake.  I’d never made one before but love a chal­lenge so this is how I did it.

WARNING — Heavy text as some dummy (me) for­got to take progress pho­tos… but it turned out great so bear with me folks.

First off I thought I’d start with a white cake recipe and add my rasp­berry good­ness to it.

White cake mix or this from scratch recipe…

Ingre­di­ents

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 eggs
• 2 tea­spoons vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 3/4 tea­spoons bak­ing powder
• 1/2 cup milk

Then To make it Rasp­berry Flavoured…

Ok.. great but it had to be rasp­berry flavoured…  I could not for the life of me find fresh rasp­ber­ries that day that weren’t grow­ing fur, so my next best option was a heap­ing table­spoon of rasp­berry jam (jelly) with the seeds for authen­tic­ity AND I added a 1/3 of a sachet of Rasp­berry Jello Crys­tals dis­solved into a half cup of water.

Cake Crumb

I fig­ured it wouldn’t throw off the bal­ance of the cake since it thick­ens as it sets up.  My the­ory proved right and the cake was rel­a­tively dense (with a fine crumb tex­ture like a Madeira or pound cake) but still light and very flavourful.

Direc­tions

1. Pre­heat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour two eight inch round pans or line a muf­fin pan with paper liners.
2. In a medium bowl, cream together the sugar and but­ter. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Com­bine flour and bak­ing pow­der, add to the creamed mix­ture and mix well. Finally stir in the milk until bat­ter is smooth, the jello crys­tals and the rasp­berry jam. Pour or spoon bat­ter into the pre­pared pan.
3. Bake for 30 to 40 min­utes in the pre­heated oven.  For cup­cakes 20–25 mins.

Rasp­berry Jam (Jelly)

For this lit­tle lady’s cake I made two 6 inch and two 8 inch round cakes to stack.

In between each match­ing pair I spread a fine layer of rasp­berry jam (jelly) and then added rasp­berry cream cheese frost­ing (my orig­i­nal recipe with some rasp­berry jello crys­tals and a small amount of jam added to it).

I placed wooden dow­els inside of McDon­alds straws into the 8 inch stacked cakes and then placed the 6 inch stacked pair on top.

Dow­els

All of the cakes were cov­ered in my crust­ing cream cheese frost­ing prior to stack­ing as they wanted it smoothed to look like fon­dant.  I then cut out about one hun­dred or so pur­ple and one hun­dred or so pink fon­dant flow­ers for dec­o­ra­tion.  This cake was to com­pli­ment a Tin­ker­bell cake topper.

The glit­ter is edi­ble sparkle glit­ter.  The cake was a lot of work but my friends loved it.  Hubby enjoyed the crumbs I had cut off the top so much I made him his very own rasp­berry cake the next day.  It was pretty much gone in an instant.  Don’t for­get to email me if you have any ques­tions.  Happy Baking!

Rasp­berry Cake

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Here’s a thought that crossed my spoiled mind this evening. What if, say, like my fam­ily in Aus­tralia, I can’t just run to the store and grab a box of red vel­vet cake mix off the shelf. I’ve obvi­ously for­got­ten that it wasn’t that many years ago that I didn’t even know what a red vel­vet cake was! Imag­ine that.

This week I received an email from a fel­low cake maker who asked me to share my favourite red vel­vet cake recipe since she wasn’t able to buy a box mix. Fel­low bak­ers give me mixed reac­tions when I openly admit to using (insert scary music here).… red vel­vet cake out of a box!! Well, I do and I’m not afraid to say it. Why not? It’s bad enough get­ting cov­ered in red cake mix, which I usu­ally do, with­out hav­ing to mess with red food colour­ing when mea­sur­ing it out for a “from scratch” recipe.

Actu­ally, there is a lit­tle his­tory to my dread of red…  I used to own a small bak­ery in Aus­tralia and had left some dec­o­rat­ing items out on the din­ing table in my brand new din­ing room, in my brand new home.  To cut a long story short, my youngest daugh­ter was a climber and the result was red food colour­ing all over her and the brand new car­pet!  We bleached it out and then had to dye the car­pet back lov­ingly with teabags.  So you might now under­stand my dis­like of red food colour­ing, even if red is my favourite color!

Ok, back to the cake at hand.  I tend to look at box cake mixes as a start­ing point, and usu­ally tweak them by chang­ing out the oil with apple sauce for instance, and adding my own flavour­ings, add-ins etc. I’m sure the good peo­ple at Dun­can Hines, Betty Crocker and Pills­bury didn’t just whip them together in five min­utes. It is my under­stand­ing that they have spent years per­fect­ing their mixes for our con­ve­nience. And very often that is the time I have no com­punc­tion in reach­ing for one.

Sure there is noth­ing quite like a del­i­cately cre­ated sponge or genoise but there are times when I just need to get out two dozen cup­cakes in a hurry and trust me, 5 year olds very rarely call me out on using a box cake mix over a scratch baked cake. Their beam­ing lit­tle faces cov­ered in frost­ing are all the proof I need that some­times, it’s ok.

So let’s get this red vel­vet cake made!

Ingre­di­ents:

• 1/4 cup dutch processed (dark) cocoa powder
• 2 table­spoons red gel food coloring
• 1/4 cup hot water
• 6 table­spoons unsalted but­ter ( softened)
• 2 table­spoons veg­etable shortening
• 1 2/3 cups sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 tea­spoon pure vanilla extract
• 2  1/2 cups cake flour
• 1 tea­spoon salt
• 1 table­spoon apple cider vinegar
• 1 tea­spoon bak­ing soda

Method:

Pre­heat oven to 325°. Line muf­fin pan with paper liners.

Whisk together cocoa pow­der, food col­or­ing, and hot water. Set aside to cool.

In the bowl of your elec­tric mixer fit­ted with a pad­dle attach­ment, cream but­ter and short­en­ing until smooth. Scrape down bowl and add sugar. Beat until mix­ture is light and fluffy, about 5 min­utes. Add eggs, one at a time, beat­ing well after each addition.

Stir but­ter­milk and vanilla into the cooled cocoa mix­ture. Sift cake flour and salt together into another bowl. With the mixer on low, alter­nate adding the flour mix­ture (in 3 parts) and the cocoa mix­ture (in 2 parts) to the egg mix­ture. Beat until incor­po­rated.  Com­bine vine­gar and bak­ing soda and stir until bak­ing soda dis­solves; the mix­ture will fizz. Add to bat­ter and stir until just combined.

Fill cup­cake pans 2/3 full with bat­ter. Bake 20 to 25 min­utes, or until a tooth­pick inserted in the cen­ter comes out clean. Remove from oven, trans­fer to a wire rack, and let cool for 10 min­utes. Remove cup­cakes from pan, and let cool completely.

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