With the festive season upon us and a spanking new house, I am determined to pull out all the stops and not take the easier catering route for the year-end gatherings in my crib. 55 hour work weeks be damned, I will figure out how to feed my friends in style. So, when I saw cake number two in this Buzzfeed article I knew this was it.
As every time-starved mother knows, detailed planning is necessary if you want to get anything done. I blocked out time two nights before the gathering – one night to make the sponge, another night to make the butter cream and dress the cake. Hands-up working moms, if shopping for groceries and supplies is another logistical nightmare. 24 hour supermarkets and definitely RedMart and HonestBee are a godsend. It took me a little over a week to stock up on the items I needed to make the cake a reality.
Night one, after fighting the daily battle of getting my toddler to sleep, I broke out the mixer and got to work. I had scored the last box of Betty Crocker Red Velvet Cake Mix from the baking store, also available from RedMart here. Instructions on the box were simple enough: 1 ¼ cups of water, ½ cup of vegetable oil and three eggs are all you need to add to the mix.
As this is a naked cake, the edges of the cake need to be perfect, so I got an 8 inch spring form pan so that I would have as little trouble as possible getting the cake out of the pan. Step one: oil the entire pan well, then turn up the mixer and churn up the cake mix with the wet ingredients. The first night’s work was surprisingly easy, the mix forms up nicely into a smooth consistency and it was just a matter of pouring it into the pan and popping it into the oven pre-heated at 170 degrees for around 19 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
Pop the whole tin in the fridge once cooled.
To prep for day two, I found that making buttercream was a cinch! Proportion goes as below:
1 Cup Butter
4 Cups Icing Sugar
4 Tablespoons of cream
3 Teaspoons of Vanilla essence
Easy enough to multiply ingredients to scale up, and really easy to make. Whip up the butter, add the rest of the ingredients, churn till smooth, and you have a tub of fluffy cream to start frosting away. Take the cake out of the fridge and carefully cut into even layers. Slather in a thick frosting between each layer of cake, don’t worry that the frosting spills out of the layers as you will be spreading some on the sides later. Piling on the frosting was pretty therapeutic and really did not take as long as I thought it would. 45 minutes from whipping up the cream to finishing the frosting tops. Now garnish the top with berries of choice and I was ready to host in style the next day!
My guests were suitably impressed and really it was a piece of cake to make!
