19 Mar 11 (Sat) - Rainbow Cake

Found another recipe for red velvet cake and wanted to try it out. The recipe calls for buttermilk but I didn't want to buy it coz the smallest packet is 600ml. So googled for a substitute and was told that one can create buttermilk using milk and lemon juice. The recipe also calls for white vinegar but found another recipe that says that one can use apple vinegar as substitute. Then I went on to tweak the recipe a little by adding blue food coloring to make it into a marble cake.

Followed the recipe closely and towards the end when I had to add the baking soda solution, I panicked a little coz the recipe said that after adding the baking soda, the cake batter had to be poured into the baking tin quickly and put into the oven to bake.

So separated the basic cake batter into three portions, added red food coloring to one and blue food coloring to the other. Then poured the baking soda solution to the three portions and quickly poured them into the baking tin and sent it into the oven. In my haste, I forgot to stir the cake batter a little to twirl the color a bit.

Set the temperature to 150 degree celcius and baking time for 20 minutes. Initially the sides of the cake rose but the middle sank. After 10 minutes, I increased the temperature to 160 degree celcius. The middle part rose and it looked just fine. When the baking time was up, used a satay stick to test it out and the middle portion was still wet.

It seemed that there was a big air bubble formed between the batter and the top layer of the cake such that the heat could not reach the batter in the middle. So had to put the cake back into the oven and baked for another 10 minutes at 150 degree celsius. When time was up, did the satay stick test again and this time it came out clean. However, I baked the cake for another 2 minutes more just to be sure.

Took the cake out to cool and was contemplating if I should proceed to do the cream cheese frosting. In the end, I didn't do the frosting. Firstly because the cake didn't look very nice; secondly, I didn't have enough butter to make enough frosting to cover the whole cake. So I just cut the cake into 12 equal pieces and took a couple of photos.

Tasted my creation and found that this cake has a bit too much of flour taste as compared to the other cake recipe that I have been using. Think I will stick to my previous recipe in the next round and improve on it.

Outside

Inside

Ingredients:

56.5g butter - soften

150g castor sugar

187.5g self-rising flour

1 eggs
125ml buttermilk (117.5ml milk with 7.5ml lemon juice and let it stand for 5 minutes)
a few drops of red food coloring
a few drops of blue food coloring

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

1/2 tsp vinegar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking power

Method:

1.  Pre-heat the oven to 150 degree celsius

2.  Beat the butter and sugar till light and fluffy

3.  Add in the egg, vanilla essence, flour and buttermilk and beat till smooth

4.  Grease one 8" x 8" cake tin
5.  Divide the mixture into three portions

6.  Add a few drops of red food coloring to one portion and blue coloring to another portion

7.  In a small bowl mix the vinegar and baking soda
8.  Add the baking soda solution to the three portions of the cake batter and mix in quickly
9.  Pour into the cake tin and place into the oven

10.  Bake for 32mins then take it out to cool