Simple Fare, Fairly Simple

My nephew and his wife had a sweet baby girl a while back. I wanted to take them dinner and since it's just the two of them...well, three now..but the baby doesn't eat food-food yet...I wanted to keep the portions small. I made this loaf cake and it was perfect. I sent half to them and kept half for us. Just a little bit of something sweet without being overwhelmed with a HUGE cake. I'm going to remember this when I need another small dessert.

Red Velvet Loaf Cake



1/4 cup shortening
3/4 cups sugar
1 egg
1 tablespoons cocoa
1 1-ounce bottle red food coloring
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 tablespoon distilled white vinegar


Grease 1 loaf pan with cooking spray. Cut some parchment paper to fit the bottom of the pan. Spray that as well.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

In a medium mixing bowl, cream the shortening and sugar for 5 minutes, scraping down the bowl occasionally.

Add the egg and beat well.

Add cocoa and red food coloring to creamed mixture.

Stir together the salt, vanilla and buttermilk. Add the flour and the milk mixture to the creamed mixture, alternately.

Mix soda and vinegar and gently FOLD into the batter.

Pour batter into prepared loaf pan.

Bake for 30 minutes. Allow to cool for 15 minutes in the pan, then remove and allow to finish cooling on rack.

The ingredients for the cake.

After mixing the shortening and sugar, add the egg.

Then add the food coloring, cocoa and salt.

Combine the buttermilk and vanilla. All I had was the powdered buttermilk substitute you can find in the baking aisle and it worked great.

Add the buttermilk mixture to the batter alternately with the flour.

Then combine the vinegar and baking soda and fold that in.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake it up!

Let the cake cool in the pan for a few minutes then turn it out onto a cooling rack to finish cooling.

Icing

4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup milk
1 cup white sugar
1 cup softened butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a medium saucepan, cook the flour and milk over low heat till thick, stirring constantly. Allow to cool to room temp. While cooling, cream the sugar, butter and the vanilla. Beat well till light and fluffy. Add to the flour mixture and beat until of a good spreading consistency. 

The ingredients for the frosting.

Combine the flour and milk in a saucepan and cook until thick, stirring constantly.

Cool to room temp. I put my pan in a sink of iced water to hurry the process along a little bit.

Cream together the sugar, butter and vanilla.

Beat it until it's nice and light and fluffy then add the cooled flour mixture and beat the daylights out of it.

Then frost your cake. You see here only half a cake because, remember...I cut it in half to share?

Then cover it in coconut!

Yum! I like cold cake so I chilled mine in the fridge.