Red Velvet ‘Flash’ Cake

The cake that almost made me quit baking.

So I work with one of the best supervisors ever. He’s highlarious and he’s just so fun to work with! He genuinely cares for all of us (the employees) and he’s just a super easy-going guy. When we have work outings, I can always bum a ride off him. Last year, at the end of the season, he handed me his debit card and said: Go buy yourself lunch, the pin is ####. Is he awesome or is he awesome?! So I thought to myself: a boss like that really deserves a cake on his birthday. (I chose Flash because he wears a tshirt with the Flash symbol pretty often and on Halloween he dressed up as Sheldon Cooper)

 I had the plans to make him a Flash cake for several weeks, but I didn’t realize how quickly his birthday was approaching until the night before at around 10pm. I was already exhausted and I reallly wanted to just buy him a cake instead but I pushed myself to bake anyway. 

The cake that I made was NOT good and I’m being realistically honest. Maybe it was because I was tired or maybe I’m really just not that good of a baker. I’m thinking it’s the latter, and you don’t have to try to convince me otherwise. 

I made a red velvet cake using a recipe that I have never tried before and it turned out horribly! Why didn’t I just stick to my go-to recipe? It definitely was not the right time to try something new. The cake tasted like vanilla, really dense vanilla cake. The edges were too dry and the middle was too moist. Then I realized that I didn’t have any cream cheese! Red velvet NEEDS to be paired with cream cheese frosting!! But since all the stores were closed I had to make do with plain vanilla buttercream. Thank goodness the buttercream turned out alright or else I might have flipped my whole kitchen upside down. When I thought that I was almost done and could go to sleep, I ran out of yellow food colouring! I had all the other colours except yellow! At that point, I had enough of baking!!!! I was so tired and so stressed, I decided to not bring in the cake to work anymore, even though it was almost done. I would rather show up with no cake than an incomplete and horrible tasting cake. Still, I texted Elephant to see if she had any yellow dye. Being the hero that she is, she saved my day again and left the dye in her mailbox for me to pick up tomorrow morning before work. 

That morning, I was being indecisive again and was choosing between whether to take the cake to work or not. But since I put in so much effort into it already and since my supervisor REALLY deserves cake, I decided to bring it. I had to complete the decorations on the cake in my crowded staff room at the very last minutes of my shift. Boy, was I on a time crunch. In the end, I didn’t get to hand the cake to him personally because he was super busying being important and all 😛 Even so, he took the time to call me and thank me over the phone. A bunch of my coworkers and I took a picture of us singing happy birthday to him. After the song we cut the cake and ate without him. My coworkers and even the managers said that the cake was delicious. I was baffled and I didn’t know whether to believe them or not. I’m pretty sure they were just being polite. Maybe the fact that we had a 10hour shift with no break/lunch made the cake taste more delicious than it does. One manager even said: you definitely have a future career in Goldilocks or something. Not exactly a compliment for someone who’s aspiring to have her own bakery someday, but I knew he meant the best 🙂

After that hectic night of baking I was this close to quitting baking altogether. Ironically, I had to bake AGAIN later on that day for another birthday. Pictures and story to come soon 🙂 Guess it’s just against nature for me to stop baking… because in another two weeks, I have 3 more birthday cakes to make. Wheeeee fun…. 

Red Velvet Cake

Ingredients

2½ cups cake flour
1½ cups sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tbsp. cocoa powder
1 tsp. salt
2 large eggs
1½ cups vegetable oil
1 cup buttermilk
2 tbsp. (1 oz.) liquid red food coloring
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. distilled white vinegar

How To

1. Preheat the oven to 350° F. 

2. Line cupcake pans with paper liners.  In a medium bowl, combine the cake flour, sugar, baking soda, cocoa powder and salt; whisk to blend. 

3. In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the eggs, vegetable oil, buttermilk, food coloring, vanilla and vinegar.  Beat on medium speed until well blended.  Mix in the dry ingredients on low speed and beat until smooth, about 2 minutes.

4. Divide the batter evenly between the prepared liners.  Bake, rotating the pans halfway through baking, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Baking time depends on the size of the cake pan that you are using.

5. Let cool in the pans 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Source: Annie’s Eats