Eggless Red Velvet Cake

          My daughter had been asking me to make this red velvet cake for a long time, just because the color made the cake very attractive. For some reason or the other I didn't make this cake until now, first I didn't have the food color, second I was baking something else and this got put off. Well , I made this cake for the last class of my cake decorating course, this time I really liked my work, we did the basket weave and it came out well. I wanted to make a small cake, so I used my 4 and a 1/2 size springform pan. Though the cake was small, it had the desired height for doing this decoration. I used butter cream frosting for the basket weave and the flowers were made earlier with royal icing. On the whole it was a satisfying experience and also this is my 100th post..

Need To Have

• All Purpose Flour - 1 + 1/4 cups
• Unsweetened Cocoa Powder - 1 tablespoon
• Brown Sugar - 3/4 cup
• Oil - 1/4 cup
• Flax Seed Powder - 3 tablespoon
• Butter Milk - 1/2 cup
• Milk - 3 tablespoons
• Baking Soda - 1 teaspoon
• Baking Powder - 1 teaspoon
• Vanilla Extract - 1 teaspoon
• Red Food Coloring - 1 tablespoon
• Salt - 1/4 teaspoon

For The Frosting

• Crisco (Vegetable Shortening) - 1 stick
• Confectioners Sugar - 1 pound
• Water - 12 teaspoons

Method
          Sift the flour,baking powder, baking soda and the cocoa powder. Add the flax seed powder to lukewarm milk, leave it for 5 to 10 mins. Now beat it for a couple of mins, add the oil, butter milk, vanilla extract, food coloring, sugar and salt, beat everything together. To this add the sifted dry ingredients, mix everything well. Pour in the greased pan and bake for 40 to 45 mins at 350F.

For The Frosting
          Blend all the ingredients given under frosting, it should come to a thick creamy consistency. Slice the cake into half, apply some frosting on one half and place the other half over it. Apply a smooth layer of frosting on the top, on the sides you can just apply a little to smooth out the cake crumbs. Now divide the cake on the top with tooth picks, at equal intervals, start by dividing the cake into half and then the half into half and so on, this way you can divide equally. Now using tip 21, you do the basket weaving, you will get an idea from this video. Use the toothpicks for doing the basket weave at equal intervals, start at one of them, do the vertical line downwards, now do the horizontal crossing from one toothpick on one side of the vertical line to one on the other side, working from bottom to top. For the flowers I used stiff royal icing and then stuck the dried flowers to the cake using some icing. Increase or decrease the frosting according to your cake size.
Sending it to Tickling Palates for the I Love Baking event,
                to Priya's Now Serving for Vardhini's Bake Fest event and
                to Divya's Culinary Journey for Showcase - Desserts event.

Note
I used a deep spring form pan, so it took 45 mins to bake, you can double the recipe and bake two cakes and then proceed in the same way.
If the pans are shallow, then the baking time will be around 25 mins.
You can use half crisco and half butter and milk instead of water, but then the cake cannot stay outside very long.