Diced! Dessert Challenge Round 3 – Tropical Red Velvet Cake

Diced! Dessert Challenge – Round 3

The Diced! Dessert Challenge continues…

Each participant in round 3 won their first two rounds and is in the final four. For this round, I am allowing the participant to choose a dessert category from the others in their quadrant (theirs, their first round competition, their second round competition and the first round competition of their second round competitor).

I will post a pairing each week on Wednesday and Thursday and open the polls for voting. The polls will be open from Thursday until the following Wednesday (before the next pair posts). The winner of each matchup with the most votes will move on to the next round and the chef will produce another recipe for their new matchup. The overall winner will receive any prizes I can acquire. To date the winner will receive:

• Dodo Book for Cooks
• A beautiful Bamboo Cutting Board with a Butterfly Motif, graciously donated by competitor Lindy (The Kozy Nook)

This week’s pairing is:

Luis vs Stephanie. Today we have Luis from The Chef Cat with a take on a classic…

Tropical Red Velvet Cake

Two weeks ago I went to a wedding. The cake served was red velvet. The last birthday party I went to served also red velvet cake. AND the last time I went to the cupcake shop the only cupcakes left were red velvet ones. A sign? Well… due to the fact that Pat has allowed all remaining participants to use categories they beated out this time I went for some red velvet cake.

So I started to do some research on red velvet cake. The cake contains red dye and I wanted to find an original recipe. One where red dye is substituted by a natural product. Originally the red velvet cake gathered its red colour by a chemical reaction. The cake contains cocoa powder. Cocoa itself contains anthocyanins, which gives the cocoa its brown colour. When cocoa is exposed to acids (In the red velvet batter the vinegar and buttermilk are acid components responsible for that reaction) the chemical compound of the anthocyanins is altered and morphs over to a red colour. This chemical reaction is what makes the red velvet cake red.

The problem is that industrial cocoa powder is treated with alkalising agents which prevent the cocoa from changing its colour. Well the task at the beginning was to find untreated cocoa powder so I could make the original recipe. Usually you get any untreated product at the farmer’s markets in Barcelona… Easier said than done… I kept looking for more than one week for this untreated cocoa powder until I gave up and succumbed to regular red dye.

So here the recipe for the tropical red velvet cake

Red velvet batter:

170 g flour

1 spoon baking soda

1 spoon cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

250 ml multi-fruit-buttermilk

30ml red dye

1 spoon vinegar

1 spoon vanilla extract

300g sugar

120 g butter

2 eggs

Mix the sugar, vanilla extract, butter and eggs. Stir everything until you get a foamy texture. Slowly add cocoa powder, buttermilk, red dye, vinegar and salt. Mix with the flour with the baking soda and add it spoon by spoon. Keep stirring until you get a homogenous batter. Spread the batter on a plain form.

Pre-heat the oven at 180ºC. Bake the red velvet cake for aprox. 20 minutes. When it is finished take it out of the oven and let it cool down.

Use a form to cut out the different layers (As I will be serving the cake in whiskey glasses I used the same whiskey glasses for cutting out the cake layers)

 

Tropical Maracuya cream:

200ml whipping cream

200ml marcuya juice

3 shards

Take 30 ml of whipping cream and heat it up. When the whipping cream starts boiling add the gelatine shards (The gelatine shard must be soaked for 5 minutes in water and then rinsed before adding the to the hot whipping cream)

Meanwhile whip the rest of the cream very foamy. Add the maracuya juice and the gelatine-cream mix. And mix until you get a homogeneous cream.

 

Building up the cake:

Add first a layer of red velvet cake. Cover it with some maracuya cream. Repeat the same procedure 2 more times until you get a cake made of 3 cake layers and 3 cream layers.

Put the cake for 3 hours in the fridge so the cream can harden.

Then serve and enjoy