A Big Red Velvet Cake Story

Today I'm working on a special order for an especially dear friend:

A red velvet cake, enough to feed 30 and dressed for a birthday.

My plan: Make 2 9x13 cakes and place them side by side. I quadrupled my one-pan red velvet cake recipe, so what I made is the equivalent of 4 cakes. The recipes provided are for 1 cake:

Red Velvet Cake (for ONE 8" round cake pan or 8x8 square dish)

1 1/8 c flour
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp baking cocoa
1 Tbsp red food coloring
1/4 c vegetable oil
3/4 c sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 c buttermilk
1/2 tsp vinegar
1/2 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour one 8" cake pan or 8x8 square baking dish.
In a bowl, combine all ingredients except vinegar and baking soda. This batter will be very thick and sticky, I recommend an electric hand mixer. Once ingredients are combined, gently fold in vinegar and baking soda. Pour batter into prepared dish and bake at 350 for 23-27 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Here are the 2 large cakes:

To make them even, I had to trim the sides:

Then I made my fluffy white frosting: (for ONE 8" or 8x8 cake")

2 c powdered sugar
1/2 c Crisco
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 c water (if you need more, add 1 tsp at a time.)

Combine ingredients in a bowl and beat with an electric hand mixer until fluffy, about 2 minutes.

So I frosted the cake, and saved some back for decorating. I dyed the saved part blue and created my plan:

My real life handwriting is terrible. I'll be honest, I haven't decorated a lot of cakes. So when I went to make letters, I sketched my path with a toothpick.

I used a pastry bag with a hole snipped in it. Not everyone has pastry bags lying around. You can totally use a Ziplock, but be careful and make sure it's heavy duty! After I did the writing, I made the hole slightly larger to do the sides. The finished product:

Okay, so there's evidence of cake crumbs. The thing in the upper right corner is a beer with a beard...inside joke. :)

The End