RED WINE VELVET CAKE
Serves Makes 1 towering, 3-layer 23cm cake – which serves 16 to 20
Ingredients
This is my favorite birthday cake for grown-ups, and, yes, I do mean grown-ups, because the wine does not fully bake out. (You’re welcome.) The flavor trifecta is red wine, chocolate, and a slip of cinnamon, three things that you will quickly see have always been meant to be together. It’s chocolate-flavored and naturally red, and the texture is so dense and moist that only a little frosting is required between the layers, and that frosting is whipped mascarpone cheese – or cream cheese.
CAKE:
225g unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for tins ( 1 kp)
400g plain flour, plus more for tins (2 3/4 kp)
430g dark brown sugar (2.5 kp)
150g granulated sugar (1 kp)
4 large eggs, at room temperature
530ml red wine (any kind you like)
2tsp vanilla extract
130g Dutch cocoa powder (see tips) (3/4 kp)
½tsp bicarbonate of soda
1tsp baking powder
¾tsp ground cinnamon
¾tsp table salt
FILLING:
450g mascarpone cheese (2 houers)
280g icing sugar (1 1/4kp)
Pinch of salt
¼tsp vanilla extract
Method
Preheat your oven to 160°C (fan 140°C/gas mark 3). Line the bottom of three 23cm round cake tins with parchment, and either butter and lightly flour the parchment and exposed sides of the pans, or spray the interior with a nonstick spray. In a large bowl, at the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugars and beat until fluffy, about 3 mins. Add the eggs and beat well, then the red wine and vanilla. Don’t worry if the batter looks a little uneven. Sift the flour, cocoa, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt together, right over your wet ingredients. Mix until three-quarters combined, then fold the rest together with a rubber spatula. Divide batter between prepared tins. Bake for 25 mins, or until a cake tester inserted into the center of each layer comes out clean. The top of each cake should be shiny and smooth, like a puddle of chocolate. Cool in pan on a rack for about 10 mins, then flip out of pan and cool the rest of the way on a cooling rack.
If your cakes have domed a bit and you want nice even layers in your stack, you can trim the tops. Use a long serrated knife, held horizontally, and use gentle back-and-forth motions with your hand on top of the cake to even it out. Share the cake scraps with whoever is around; no one will mind helping you remove ‘debris.’
To make the filling, in a medium bowl, beat the mascarpone with the icing sugar, pinch of salt, and vanilla extract at medium speed until the mixture is light and fluffy, about 1 to 2 mins.
To assemble the cake, place the first cake layer on a cake stand or plate, and spread with one-third of the filling. Repeat with remaining two layers. Chill the cake in the fridge until you’re ready to serve it.
Recipe extracted and image taken from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman
Top tips
This recipe makes a three-layer cake with three layers of filling. You won’t have enough to coat the sides – I liked the look of the cake stacked and open. You can double the frosting recipe to cover it, but I want to warn you that there is a bit of translucence to the whipped mascarpone, and the cake is likely to peep through anyway.
Dutch cocoa powder (or alkalized) is treated with an alkaline to reduce the acidity of the cocoa. Cocoa powder isn’t labelled as ‘Dutch’ in the UK, so you will need to read the ingredients to see if an alkaline has been used; however, both Valrhona and Green & Black’s (widely available) are Dutch processed.
Foto: Michelle Joubert
