Red velvet bundt cake

When I saw a recipe for a red velvet bundt cake a while ago, I was really intrigued.  I'd never seen a red velvet bundt cake before, but more importantly, I couldn't figure out why it had never occurred to me to make one before!  And while everyone loves my red velvet cupcakes, I didn't know if that recipe would work in a bundt cake or not, so when it came to making the bundt cake, I ended up using the recipe I found.

So the recipe sat in my virtual recipe box on Pinterest for a long time.  Until today.  See, B has family visiting from out of the country, and his visitor was talking about these cool new cupcakes at home, red velvet.  B told him how I baked all the time and made me show him pictures of my baking (I showed him B's favorite, the Samoa Cupcakes, and while he was flipping through pictures, he saw the red velvet ones I had made at that same time, about a year ago, for a friend's 30th birthday).

Since we're getting together at the end of the week, I figured I'd bake something red velvet for B's visitor.  Enter the aforementioned red velvet bundt cake.  The only thing I doctored with this recipe was the icing.  I wanted to make a white chocolate-cream cheese icing, so I decreased the powdered sugar (the white chocolate has sweetness of it's own), added the white chocolate, and added just a little extra milk to thin it out and make it pourable.  (And by the way, this makes a TON of icing....I ended up using about half of it on the cake.  I'm debating what I can use the rest of it for, but I'm sure I'll come up with something else to use it for.)

Red Velvet Bundt Cake
From Bird on a Cake

Ingredients:

For the cake:

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt (as I type this up, I am not 100% sure if I ended up adding the salt, but having tasted the cake already, I can say that if I left it out, it was still delicious!)
3 Tbsp cocoa powder (I used dark cocoa powder out of laziness, and I have to say, it made it absolutely delicious!!)
1 tsp white vinegar (I used cider vinegar because thats what I had at home, and thats what my other red velvet cake called for)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 oz red food coloring (thats 2 Tbsp.  I used 4 tsp (1 1/3 Tbsp) of gel coloring, which is richer and therefore I used a little less)

For the icing:

8 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
4 cups confectioners' sugar (I used just over 3)
1 tsp vanilla extract

4 oz white chocolate, melted and slightly cooled
1/4 cup milk (I used closer to 1/3 cup)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. 

Grease a Bundt pan really well (I used Pam for baking, and I sprayed it liberally, and the cake popped right out of the pan).  

Place one cupcake liner in a cupcake tin (this will be used for the garnish). 

In a medium bowl, mix eggs with a wire whisk. 

Add oil, vinegar, vanilla, buttermilk and food coloring. 

Whisk together and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, mix together all the dry ingredients. 

Add the wet ingredients and mix on medium high until combined.  

Fill cupcake liner half full with batter, then pour the rest of the batter into your Bundt pan. 

Bake the cupcake for 20-25 minutes, and bake the cake for 50-55 minutes.

Let the cake cool.

Make the icing.

Mix together the room temperature butter and cream cheese.

Add the sugar and vanilla.  I add the sugar in about 1/2 cup increments, for 2 reasons - (1) if you add it all at once, you will inevitably be wearing powdered sugar, and (2) that way you can adjust the level of sweetness.

Add the white chocolate.

Add the milk.

Pour over the cooled cake.

Crumble the cooled cupcake.

Sprinkle over the iced cake.