Roses Red Velvet Cake

This was a massive 12" red velvet cake for a lucky birthday lady. Her kids don't like red food colouring in frosting, but they love red velvet cake! I think red velvet cake is yummy, but the amount of red food colouring in it is pretty scary! I used one whole jar of Wilton no taste red gel food colouring for each batch of cake. (Did you know the primary ingredient in food colouring is titanium dioxide? Learned that from chef Marco Röpke at the Pastry Training Centre of Vancouver)

Red Velvet cake covered in roses

This cake was 4 layers of red velvet cake, with 3 layers of cream cheese Swiss meringue buttercream in between. The roses on the outside are vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream, piped using a 1M tip. 

view from the back

Making cream cheese Swiss meringue buttercream isn't as scary as you read online. Just beat a brick or two of cream cheese up in your mixer. It doesn't matter if the cream cheese is cold. Then add an equal amount (by weight) of your finished vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream into the mixing bowl, big spoonfuls at a time, making sure that each spoonful is incorporated into the cream cheese before adding the next spoonful. It is important that you add the Swiss meringue buttercream to the whipped cream cheese, and not the other way around! When you've worked it all in, add in the juice of 1/2 a lemon to bring out that tart cream cheesy flavour, and boom, you've got cream cheese Swiss meringue buttercream!

Add caption

I added one red rose in the sea of white roses to give the party guests a hint of what kind of cake was hiding under all the frosting. And seriously, the whole cake weighed more than my 10 month old baby girl! Well, almost.

Happy Birthday, Karen!