Learning 2 Bake from Scratch – LIX

Red Cake

This is the cake that “belongs” to the buttercream frosting recipe from the Halloween Cupcakes.

Red Cake
From: Jo

Cream:
1/2 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla
Add 2 eggs, beat well
Make paste with then add to above:
2 oz red food coloring
3 Tbl cocoa
Alternately add portions of
2 1/4 cup flour
1 cup buttermilk
Immediately before baking add:
1 tsp soda
1 Tbl vinegar

Pour into two layer pans. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes.

2 OUNCES of red food coloring? This is a very old recipe. Perhaps red food coloring was not very good back then? I used about 1/4 ounce. That was sufficient to “cover” the brown from the cocoa. I mixed it into the eggs, not the cocoa. My thought being “everything else is white, if the eggs turn red, that should do it.” That was a bit gross (anyone who has dealt with collecting eggs will realize why) and, more importantly, wrong. The cocoa turned the batter a hideous puce color. Moar redz! but still not even close to two ounces.

As usual, the grocery store didn’t have buttermilk. They had that stuff that is labeled “buttermilk” but is the result of “let’s throw chemicals in until the spectrometer reads as buttermilk”. Blech. Using regular milk results in an acid shortfall, which matters because…

The pre-baking-powder leavening. That’s just annoying. I replaced the soda and vinegar with 2 tsp powder and 1/4 tsp salt. That worked out fine without putting a countdown timer on the “mix, pour, bake” steps.

Much to my surprise, given the “egg size” thing with my grandmother’s recipes, this was a very thick batter. I wonder if it had to do with me using cake flour and sifting it (after measuring).

I have precut parchment paper rounds for the 9-inch pans, so I used those. 8-inch would have made a nicer looking cake. These layers are a bit thin so I didn’t trim the tops to flatten them out. That turned out to be a mistake because…

The half-and-half with Kerry Gold butter frosting tastes amazing. But, it is more of a pastry cream than a frosting. I let it sit in the ‘fridge overnight and it was still a bit thin this morning. That became a problem when filling in the gap between the reciprocally curved cakes. That’s why there is no final product picture. Two seconds after smoothing it out, the frosting starts oozing down the sides to form a moat around the cake. The fix is simple: Just add powdered sugar at the end until it reaches the desired consistency.

OH! The crochet group gave The Laird some mini-gnomes (like yard gnomes but for houseplants). Putting them in that moat would have been fun. A missed opportunity.

On the bright side, the cake spinning tray and offset spatula are still awesome. If you make cakes and don’t have both, buy what you don’t have before you make the next one.