There is something so inviting and striking about a Red Velvet Cake, the rich redness of the cake, the white cream cheese icing and the red freeze dried strawberries. This is a really easy cake to make and looks amazing.  This recipe will make about 12 cupcakes or 1 x 18cm ‘Victoria sandwich’ style cake.

You will need:

For the cupcakes:

• 100g Beetroot cooked and finely grated
• 1 tsp Lemon juice
• 160g Plain flour
• ½ tsp Salt
• 1 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
• 200g Caster sugar
• 20g Cocoa powder
• 150g Butter
• 2 Eggs
• 60ml Milk (I used full fat milk)
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• ½ – 1 tsp of red food colouring

Icing:

• 200g Cream cheese
• 50ml Double cream
• 100g Icing sugar
• 1tsp vanilla essence

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 160degrees and put your cupcake cases in your bun tray.
• Sprinkle the lemon juice over the grated beetroot and put to one side.
• Put all of the remaining cake ingredients into your mixing bowl and blend well.
• Add the beetroot, mix gently on a low speed on your mixer or by hand, so the beetroot is distributed thoroughly in the cake mixture.
• Divide the mixture evenly between the cupcake cases and bake for 15-20mins until cooked.
• Transfer onto a cooling rack and allow to cool completely.
• Once the cakes have cooled make the icing. Put all the icing ingredients into a clean mixing bowl and mix until the icing has thickened and is light and fluffy.
• I used a piping bag to ice the cakes with a large rose nozzle.
• Once iced, sprinkle with the freeze dried strawberries.

Tips:

• Due to the use of cream cheese these are best eaten within 3 days and kept somewhere cool.
• After a day the freeze dried strawberries will absorb the moisture from the icing and will go soft, so if you are making these in advance save the strawberry sprinkling until you are about to serve or display!
• If you are making the ‘victoria sponge’ style red velvet, then grease and line 2 x 18cm loose bottomed cake tins and cook for about 40min or until cooked – this can be tested with a skewer – when inserted into the middle of the cake it will come out clean when cooked. Divide the icing between the middle and top of the cake or go for total coverage (you may need a little extra icing to cover the hole cake!)