A few weeks ago I wrote about my Easy Red Nose Cupcakes for Sport Relief and The Team Honk Great Blogger’s Bake Off hosted by the lovely Jenny Paulin. Today I decided to have a go at making a celebration cake as the Team Honk relay baton recently made it all the way from Lands’ end to John o’ Groats raising an amazing £31626.00 along the way. This is a red velvet and vanilla sponge cake, there are red noses hidden in the bottom layer and the top layer is in the form of a chequered flag to celebrate reaching the finish line. I copied Kimberley from GBBO to make the chequered pattern but added frosting between the circles to help hold the cake together.

The main decoration on the cake was a map of the route the Team Honk Baton took. I added signs for Lands’ End and John o’ Groats, and runners starting off and celebrating at the end, both holding the baton. I added water icing writing for Team Honk 2014 and Sport Relief.

To make the red noses in the bottom tier I baked some small cake balls using a silicone mould and a red velvet cake mix, I ued the remaining red velvet batter to make the first layer of the top tier.

Red velvet cake mix

Ingredients

60g Unsalted butter (softened)

150g Castor sugar

1 Egg (beaten)

1/2 tsp Vanilla extract

10g Cocoa powder

150g self raising flour

1/2 tsp Salt

120ml whole milk

2 tsp white malt / white wine vinegar

Red food colouring (gel or liquid)

Method

• Preheat oven to 180c
• In a free standing mixer cream the butter and sugar
• In a separate bowl combine the flour, cocoa powder and salt
• Add the egg slowly to the buttercream, addins a spoonful of the flour mixture if the batter starts to split
• add the remaining flour and mix until smooth
• Add the vinegar to the milk to curdle it then slowly add to the cake batter.
• Add liquid or gel red food colouring, a little at a time, mixing until you have a deep red colour.
• From this mix I made 20 cake pops (1x tray) and the bottom half of the top tier in a 6 inch cake tin. At a guess you could get about 6-8 cupcakes from this mixture.
• The cake pops baked in about 12 minutes, the very thin 6 inch cake in about 15.

Next I made the vanilla cake mix using 3 times the amounts detailed in my Basic vanilla cupcakes recipe and made the second layer of the top 6 inch tier and the bottom tier. For the bottom tier I arranged the pre-baked cake balls in two 8 inch cake tins and then spooned in the vanilla cake mix to cover them, then baked in a 180c oven for about 25 minutes.

To make the chequered pattern in the top tier I cut both layers into concentric circles and created an alternating pattern.