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.
wow this cake looks epic Jenny on the outside as well as the inside! to add the red nose cake pops inside the sponge is genius! i really love it and thank you so much for baking this especially to link up today, very lovely of you x x
That’s an amazing looking cake, I love how you have decorated the outside.
omg…This is just fantastic! Brilliant!!!