Red Velvet Traybake

This red velvet traybake cake is soft, moist, lightly chocolatey and topped with a thick layer of smooth and silky vanilla cream cheese frosting and a scattering of red velvet cake crumbs. It has everything you love about a classic red velvet cake, but made into an easy traybake sponge.

This cake looks impressive despite it’s single layer, it has a gorgeous deep red tone with a balanced vanilla and chocolate flavour, and the sweet and tangy cream cheese topping is perfect on top, making it perfect for bake sales, parties, birthdays, Christmas, or even just a weekend baking treat.

Notes from The Patisserie

Sometimes, I find that red velvet cake gets a lot of hate, and I really can’t see why. Maybe the reason why it’s red has been lost along the way but it really is just a cake with a particularly light and delicate crumb, with a different level of moisture thanks to the addition of certain ingredients such as buttermilk, and it really is quite delicious.

The soft and tender sponge balances really well with the (really very) thick cream cheese frosting on top and I personally adore that flavour balance. I have made many different red velvet cakes in my time, and the colour success is always down to use a very good red food colouring that you nearly always have to buy online (but I promise you it’s worth it)

Ingredient notes and tips

This delicious recipe is incredibly easy to make, and you can find the full recipe in the recipe card below

• Butter – For the cake, you can use a block unsalted (or salted) butter at room temperature or a baking spread
• Sugar – I tend to use caster sugar as it’s the easiest balance of flavour, and it then doesn’t colour the sponge in any way like brown sugar could
• Eggs – I use medium eggs in all of my bakes, but you could use two large and an extra egg yolk if you only have large
• Vanilla – this is technically optional, but I would say silly to leave out. I prefer a good quality extract or bean paste – I never use essence.
• Cocoa – A good quality cocoa powder is best for flavour – I use a 100% cocoa content strong powder, but it still has a red undertone which helps with the colouring. Avoid hot chocolate powders as they are mainly sugar and won’t create flavour – and a black cocoa will compete with the colouring too much.
• Flour – it may sound strange, but you want to use plain flour. The raising agent comes from the bicarbonate, vinegar and buttermilk so you don’t want to use self raising flour
• Raising agents – as mentioned above, this is use as the raising agent – don’t switch to baking powder as they are not the same
• Vinegar – this is essential to the cake. I use white wine vinegar, but apple cider vinegar also works – if you can’t have alcohol, lemon juice can work (but sometimes not as well)
• Buttermilk – this is an important ingredient – do not swap. If you don’t want to buy it, you can make your own using 250ml of full fat (or dairy free alternative) and adding in 1tbsp of lemon juice. Let it sit and curdle for 5 minutes before using in the recipe

The food colouring

As the cake is meant to be bright, vibrant and obviously VERY RED, it’s important to use the correct food colouring. I am based in the UK which means we have restrictions on what is allowed in a food dye, so not all of ours work wonderfully when it comes to baking.

I use this bright red extra strong food colouring and it has never failed me. Any that you buy from a supermarket will not work as they are much weaker, and usually watered down.

Making a thick cream cheese frosting

As mentioned previously, I am based in the UK, so it’s it’s notoriously hard to make cream cheese frosting compared to other countries as we do not get block cream cheese (use that if you can buy it!!) so sometimes it can go a little runny. 

However, I have developed a thick and pipeable cream cheese frosting that has a slightly different base to the normal ones you see online, and I think thats the why it works. Equal parts block unsalted butter (NEVER a spread or margarine) and icing sugar (powdered sugar), mixed together until combined. Make sure the butter is at room temperature so you can mix it until smooth – lumpy butter will cause problems. 

Mix in vanilla if using, and then the full-fat soft cream cheese. Some brands carry more water in their container, so make sure to drain that off. Don’t over mix as this can slacken it! Find more information on this on my separate blog post.

Storage and Freezing

As this cake is topped with a thick and wonderful cream cheese frosting, it needs to be kept in the fridge. Due to the ingredients used in the cake, the cake should remain moist in the fridge – but if you are worried, keep the sponge at room temperature and top with the frosting when you are ready to serve.

The cake can be frozen for 3+ months – whole, or sliced. I like to thaw it in the fridge overnight to make sure that the frosting remains cold.