September seems to be a big birthday month for lots of people, and if you’re celebrating something, you just can’t beat the extravagance of three or four layers of Red Velvet cake. This cake, layered and dressed in cream cheese icing, is pure decadence on a plate. This particular recipe makes a large cake, so you can layer it beautifully for the ultimate show-stopper.

Here’s what goes in:

• 5 cups of flour
• 3 cups of sugar
• 2 teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda
• 2 teaspoons of cocoa powder, sifted
• 2 teaspoons of salt
• 2 cups of buttermilk
• 4 eggs, at room temperature
• 2 cups of vegetable oil
• 2 teaspoons of white vinegar
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla essence
• A generous squirt of red food colouring (it should be gel food colouring to get the rich colour)

For the cream cheese icing:

• 250g of firm cream cheese
• 250g of butter, softened
• 3 cups of icing sugar, sifted
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

How to do it:

This is definitely one of those recipes where you want to use a cake mixer – the quantities are large, you’ll appreciate the big deep bowl. Before you start, preheat your oven to 180°C. Combine the eggs and sugar until they are thick and pale yellow. Once you’ve got that consistency, add the rest of the ingredients together and blend. Start off on a slow speed, getting all the ingredients to gently combine. At this point, the colour of the batter should be the bright red that you want your cake to be. Go with your gut feel and if it’s not red enough, squirt a bit more of the gel colouring into the batter.

Now, by hand, scrape the sides and the bottom of the bowl so that the batter is all evenly coloured. Spoon this into individual lined and greased baking tins. I use 4 round cake tins with a diameter of approximately 24cm each. First prize is to bake each layer of cake individually so that you don’t have to cut layers out of one large cake. In saying that, you may have to level your cakes out if they don’t bake evenly. Try to avoid cut cake where possible because it is tricky to ice. Remember, these cakes are shallow, so they bake quickly – around 20 minutes. You should be able to bake two at a time.

To make cream cheese icing combine the butter and cream cheese in a mixing bowl in a mixing bowl until you have a smooth, soft consistency. Gradually add the icing sugar bit by bit, mixing as you go. Once all the icing sugar is blended in, you can add the vanilla essence and stir, making sure to scrape the sides of the bowl to get everything well combined. Add more icing sugar as desired, to get a stiffer consistency. Your cakes must be completely cooled before you start icing.