I got the honor of making a cake for TYRMYs (Turku university friends of heavier music, or something like that) birthday party. They wished for something black (obviously), otherwise i got free hands. Luckily I had bought the 2,5 kg of black marzipan earlier, so it was easy to make it as black as possible. For the inside I wanted something a bit richer and decided to make a red velvet cake. The red base suits the purpose perfectly, even though mine could have been a bit more red and less brown. I think i need to tweak the amounts of red color and cocoa, but I'm afraid putting less cocoa might have an effect on the taste, which i don't want, since this cake tastes divine, or lets rather say... sinful, just the way it is. The recipe is originally from here.
Hint: When you need a sturdy cake that you can stack high or it needs to stay good for a long time, I recommend you make a margarine and dairy based base like this one instead of a general cake base. The heavier bases are also easier to cut into thin layers.
Red velvet cake
Red base:
- 6 dl flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp dark cocoa powder
- 115 g butter
- 3,5 dl sugar
- 2 large or 3 small eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2,5 dl or 1 cup of buttermilk
- 2 tsp liquid red food color
- 1 tsp white vinegar
- 1 tsp baking soda
Mix the flour, salt and cocoa together. Mix the butter with an electric mixer until it's soft. Add the sugar and beat the mixture fluffy. Mix in the eggs and then the vanilla extract. Whisk the buttermilk and red color together in a separate container. Mix the flour and the buttermilk mixture in the batter a little at a time in turns starting and ending with the flour. Combine the vinegar with the soda and let it fizz. Fold in the batter. Bake in low greased molds for 25-30 mins. I had a large round mold (about 25 cm in diameter) and a little smaller one (abot 20-22 cm).
Cream cheese filling:
- 3,5 - 4 dl whipping cream
- 200 - 250 g unflavoured cream cheese (preferably room temperature)
- 200 - 250 g mascarpone cheese (preferably room temperature)
- 3/4 tsp vanilla extract
- 115 g or 2,5 dl powdered sugar
Whip the cream. Mix the cheeses. Add the vanilla extract and sugar in the cheeses. Fold in the cream a little at a time.
Cut the cake bases thinly in 3 layers. Fill both of the bases separately. Moisten the bottom layer with some milk and spread on some on the filling. Spread on some filling and do the same for the other filling layer. Moisten the top layer from below and place it on top. Now you could smooth the surface out with some sugar cream, but since my cake was to be eaten the same day and the filling is quite thick it works rather well on its own as insulation, so I used the same cream cheese filling for the purpose.
I rolled some black barzipan flat and covered the cake bases with that. You can see how to cover two layer cakes with marzipan from the Mother's Day cake. Except this time I placed the top layer a little bit asymmetric, not in the middle. Now since this time I wasn't going to put anything in the seam of the two cakes to hide some possible crack between them, I cut the rim or the small base a little too big and stuck it under the cake with a spatula before i lifted the small base on the larger one.
I painted on the TYRMY logo and continued some chain also on the bottom layer. Then I added some \,,/ hands and a metallist figurine climbing on the cake. I also painted a little something in the memory of Ronnie James Dio in the back, since he passed away just a week ago.
And here's what the cake looked like:
The cake was a success and in the end the metallist and some true fans were still left standing. And we of course used a dagger to cut the cake. Happy birthday TYRMY!
TYRMY - Metallikakku - Raskas musiikki - Hevikakku - Punainen samettikakku
