Red wine velvet cake with whipped mascarpone
By Deb Perelman of The Smitten Kitchen and The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook
Who isn't charmed by red velvet cakes? But behind the pretty facade, so much of it doesn't add up for me. The chocolate is barely perceptible and the red 'velvet' is just red food dye, and a lot of it. But one day, a reader left a comment on an everyday chocolate cake in my archives and told me she'd been out of the required buttermilk and used red wine instead. She'd turned a chocolate cake into a red wine-chocolate cake. It quickly became one of our favorite cakes. With its loud chocolate flavor and natural red tint - this was the real red velvet cake.
CAKE:
FILLING:
Recipe extracted and image taken from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbookby Deb Perelman (Square Peg, £20), which is out now
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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.
