Red Velvet Cake with Fondant Icing

It was husband's birthday in March; he's a big Superman fan and his name starts with an S too, so this was the obvious choice of icing.

For the cake:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder
• Pinch salt
• 1/4 cup butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup buttermilk (1/2 cup milk with 1 tsp lemon juice or vinegar - set aside  for 5 min to curdle)
• red food colour according to instructions (1tbsp if using liquid colour, a few dabs with a toothpick if using gel)
• 1 tsp white vinegar
• 1 tsp baking soda

In a bowl, sift together the flour, salt, and cocoa powder. Keep aside.
In another bowl, whisk together the butter and sugar till creamy. Add the vanilla and the eggs, and whisk some more.

In the buttermilk, add the food colouring and mix well.

Alternate adding the flour mix and the buttermilk into the creamy batter in 3 stages starting and ending with the flour (flour-buttermilk-flour-buttermilk-flour). Whisk lightly, incorporating all ingredients.

In a separate bowl, add the baking soda to the vinegar - it should fizz. Add this immediately to the cake batter, and mix well. Put the batter in a 9 inch lined/greased cake tin and put in a pre-heated oven at 180 deg C. Try to minimise the time between the fizzing and shoving in the oven so that the soda doesn't fizzle out.
Bake for 35-40 min. Cool on a wire rack, then remove from cake tin and put it in the fridge.

For the icing:
Fondant icing sugar
Food colouring
1/2 cup ice water
1/2 cup cornflour

If using different colours as icing, divide the sugar into as many parts.
Sift the sugar (it is usually rock hard so I need to put it in a blender to reduce the lumps, then sift). Start by adding a few drops of water and knead well. Adding too much water will make it runny and it won't roll out. It should become pliable like pastry dough. Add the food colour of your choice.

The rolling is the difficult part. Sprinkle some cornflour on the counter, and coat your rolling pin and hands with some too. This will prevent the dough from sticking.start rolling carefully but don't roll it too thin else it'll break when you roll it over the cake: But too think and the cake topping will be too hard and sugary. Should be approximately 2-3 mm thick.

If cutting a design, use a sharp knife and lots of cornflour to pry the design out without breaking it. You could try rolling it out on baking paper if it helps.

Dab some water to make the fondant stick to fondant. Even if you have some tears or holes, just use a piece of same coloured fondant and some water to patch it up.