Red Velvet Rose Cake

My little baby turned two, and in celebration I made this red velvet rose cake. I can't believe that my little guy is already two! She's a character. I hope she's always this free-spirited and full of life.

In our family it's a tradition for the birthday girl or boy to choose what they would like me to prepare for dinner and dessert. For dinner, the baby chose "creamy pasta" otherwise known as fettuccini Alfredo. As for dessert she said, "Mommy, I want cake with lots of flowers." So, I chose red velvet because that's my husband's favorite, and I translated "lots of flowers" to mean these beautiful, but super-simple, roses.

I don't mean to sound annoying by saying that this is actually an extremely easy cake to make and decorate. The cake recipe itself is a dump and mix kind of recipe. No creaming. No whipping egg whites. No folding ingredients together. The most complicated part of the cake is probably sifting the dry ingredients.

The decorating is also super simple. There are only three items you need to ensure a successful rose decorated cake:

1 – The proper tip: You need a 1M tip. (Which you can pick up at any craft store.)

2 – Stiff frosting:  My regular fluffy vanilla frosting, which I love, isn't suitable because it's not stiff enough. Instead, I used a frosting with the same amount of butter as my regular frosting recipe, but with a ton of additional powdered sugar.

3 – Properly crumb coated cake: You need to prepare your layered cake by filling it, and frosting it with a thin layer of frosting to lock in the crumbs so they don't mix into the beautiful roses that you pipe around the entire surface of the cake. This cake is very moist, so as it's being frosted, there will definitely be crumbs sticking to the frosting.

I should also mention that piping this many roses requires quite a bit of frosting. It's actually perfect for my sweet five-year-old who doesn't like cake but loves frosting.

As for the actual piping of the roses, all you do is start by making a small swirl in the middle of the rose, and continue piping in a circular motion until your rose reaches your desired size. After piping all of the roses, there can be gaps between the roses. I filled in those gaps by piping lines in the same direction as the rose.

There are some great tutorials out there for piping roses like this. My favorite is from the original creator of the rose cake, Amanda from I am Baker. The only portion of the tutorial I departed from was putting an additional layer of frosting on the cake after you crumb coat it. I piped the roses directly on to the crumb coat. I felt like there would be way too much frosting if I added another layer of frosting. It turned out just fine. Not one spec of red velvet cake showed through the white frosting. 

You'll notice that there are no photos of the inside of the cake. You can see some of the red velvet peaking out in the photo with the crumb coating.

I couldn't cut the cake until after my sweet birthday girl blew out her candles, and by then, nobody wanted me to take photos of the cake. They all wanted to dig in and eat!

 

Red Velvet Rose Cake

 

Red Velvet Cake

Adapted from Terri Wahl's Recipe for Red Velvet Cupcakes

Ingredients

15 1/2 ounces all-purpose flour

1 1/4 tsp baking soda

1 1 /4 tsp salt

2 tbs unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/2 cups vegetable oil (I use grape seed oil)

13 ounces granulated sugar

1 1/4 cups of milk

3 eggs

1 tsp of red food color gel (if you are using regular food color, use 2 tbs plus 2 tsp of food color)

1 tbs and 1 and 1/4 tsp white vinegar

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1/8 cup water

 

Stiff Vanilla Piping Frosting

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups unsalted butter at room temperature

2 lbs plus 2 cups powdered sugar (which is about 10 cups or 1 bag plus 2 cups of powdered sugar)

3 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup milk (2 percent fat or higher)

 

Red Velvet Cake Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350F. Line two 8-inch round cake pans with parchment paper. Spray the pans with non-stick cooking spray.

In a measuring cup, mix the milk and 1 tbs of vinegar. Allow it to stand and curdle.

Sift the flour, baking soda, cocoa, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.

In a large bowl, pour in the oil. While whisking, slowly add the sugar. Add the milk mixture and mix until just combined. Add the eggs, water, vanilla, red food color, and remaining vinegar. Whisk until combined.

Slowly add the dry ingredient to the wet ingredients. Mix until just combined.

Pour the batter into the prepared cake pans. Allow them to bake for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out with a few crumbs sticking to it.

Cool the cakes on a wire rack. After cooking for about 15 minutes, turn the cakes out of the pans onto a wire rack. Allow them to cool completely.

 

Stiff Vanilla Piping Frosting Instructions

In a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and vanilla until it's fluffy.

Add all of the powdered sugar at once. Mix on the lowest speed to ensure that the powdered sugar does not fly out of the mixing bowl.

Add the milk a little at a time. Add just enough milk until you reach a nice, stiff consitsency. 

 

Red Velvet Rose Cake Assembly Instructions

Level each cake layer. Fill and stack the cakes. Apply a thin layer of frosting to the cake in order to seal in the crumbs. (This is called a crumb coat.) Chill the cake to allow the crumb coat to harden.

Using a piping bag and a 1M tip, pipe the flowers. Fill in any gaps between the flowers with additional frosting

Yields one, double-layer, 8-inch cake.

 

This post is linked to these parties.

 

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