Red Velvet Doll Cake For My Daughter's 18th Birthday

To celebrate my daughters 18th birthday, I made a doll cake for her. She particularly wanted this cake as I had made a doll cake for her 1st birthday. So, making it again for her 18th birthday actually completes a whole circle, significant of bidding adieu to her childhood and taking her first steps into the adult world.

I chose to make a Red Velvet cake for her birthday. It is also because she is quite fond of it and being her special day I wanted her cake to be special too. I have made this cake earlier too but with oil. It was a beautiful cake - super moist, soft and melt-in-the-mouth delicious. If interested you can check out the recipe here. This time I decided to use a different recipe that used butter. I can't say I was entirely happy with it. It was soft and moist and quite tasty but if compared, it did not match up to the oil cake which was outstanding in both taste and texture. Even though I followed the recipe to the 'T', I was disappointed to see that the color of the cake was barely red, infact it looked like an ordinary chocolate cake. You can try both the recipes.

I frosted the cake with mascarpone cheese mixed with whipped cream as it is a little difficult finding Cream Cheese here in the market. Also because these two creams mixed together were great for piping the decorations on the doll. If you want to learn how to make mascarpone cheese at home,do read my Tiramisu post. My daughter loved the doll cake. She was also taken by surprise, because amidst a really busy weekend,(one entire day spent in some urgent hospital check-ups and the next day spent in chauffeuring  the birthday girl and her friends, who were over for a sleep-over to the mall), she didn't really expect me to come up with the cake, the look of surprise and happiness evident on her face when she found me decorating the cake. 

A labor of love indeed for my lovely one!!

Ingredients

21/2 cups all purpose flour

21/2 Tbsp cocoa powder

1 tsp salt

11/2 cups caster sugar

2 eggs

120 gms salted butter

11/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup buttermilk

1 tsp white vinegar

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

2 Tbsp red food coloring

For icing the cake

2 cups whipped cream

1 cup mascarpone cheese

Method :- Preheat oven to 175 C. Sift the flour, salt and cocoa powder into a bowl and set aside. In an electric mixer cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one by one whilst the mixer is still on. Add the vanilla essence. In a measuring jug, whisk the buttermilk and food coloring until combined. In a mixer on low speed, alternately add the dry mixture and wet buttermilk until all is used up.Turn the mixer off. Combine the vinegar and baking soda in a cup and gently fold into the mixture with a spatula. Pour the cake mixture into a greased baking tin. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 - 35 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Allow to cool on wire racks. Once completely cool wrap it in a cling film and refrigerate for a few hours before doing the frosting.

For Frosting the cake- Whisk together the whipping cream and mascarpone cheese till smooth. I used a store bought whipped cream which was already sweetened. Incase you are whipping cream at home, add in the sugar according to taste and consistency. To decorate the doll cake, I took some tips from a video on You tube. You can check out the link here.