Red Velvet Cupcakes

Devilish in red!

There are now three Hummingbird Bakeries in London… the original in Portobello, the sister café in South Kensington, and the newest member of the growing family in Soho. But yes, they are all in London. So if you’re a Hummingbird groupie, and dream at night of the best icing you’ve ever had, the smoothest, ruby-reddest cake dough you’ve ever seen, read on to find out how to recreate the foodstuff of dreams for yourselves…

Ingredients

For the cake you will need: 60g butter, 150g caster sugar, 1 egg, 10 g cocoa (approx one table spoon), 20ml red food dye (approx half of one of those little bottles!), ½ tsp vanilla essence, 120ml buttermilk, 150g plain flour, ½ tsp salt, ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda, 1 ½ tsp white wine vinegar.

For the icing you will need: 300 icing sugar, 50g butter (real butter not margarine), 125g cream cheese.

• Preheat the oven to 170˚C
• In a blender beat the butter and the sugar together until smooth and creamy.
• Beat in the egg until even smoother and creamier.
• In a separate bowl mix together the cocoa, red food dye, and vanilla until it has formed an inedible looking red paste.
• Add this paste to the butter mixture and combine until the redness has spread evenly throughout the mixture.
• Add half the buttermilk into this, and slowly blend.
• Add half the flour to this, and slowly blend.
• Then repeat this pattern with the rest of the buttermilk and the rest of the flour.
• When this is all blended in, put the blender on high and blast it for ten seconds.
• Turning down the speed again, add the vinegar, bicarbonate of soda, and salt and thoroughly blend this all in, mixing for another minute or so.

(Having the mixer on different speeds for different part of the process is not essential, but if you have a mixer that will do this then do!)

The amount of time for cooking will vary depending on whether you want to make cupcakes or a big cake, and also on how good your oven is. In these student houses, or – even worse, halls – you can never quite be sure that your oven will be as good as the ovens authors of cookery books assume we use. As an estimate, 15 minutes for cupcakes, and 20-30 minutes for a bigger cake should be enough. However, to check your cakes are done, have a fork or a skewer to hand, and if you suspect they are cooked stick this in the middle of the cake, and if it comes out clean, without any of the mixture stuck to it, then they are done.

For the icing make sure the butter is soft before you begin, otherwise it is impossible to combine it with the cream cheese.

• Assuming it is soft, mix it gently with the cream cheese.
• (It is best to mix the icing by hand as, if you over beat it, it can become too runny and once too runny there’s no way of making it thick again.)
• Once you have gently beaten the cream cheese and butter then sieve in the icing sugar, not all at once, but maybe quarter of it at a time, and gently mix this in.
• The result you are looking for is a consistency like cream cheese; think enough to stand up on the cake without running down the sides.
• Put this in the fridge for a while before putting it on the cakes.
• Make sure the cakes are fully cooled before applying the icing as the icing melts very easily.
• It is recommendable not the put the icing on until you want to serve the cakes, as the icing needs to be refrigerated, but the cakes aren’t as nice if they’ve been refrigerated, so it’s hard to store them together.

If all fails, then just go to the Hummingbird Bakery and try them for yourselves!

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