red.cake.yum

So I made a red velvet cake the other day for a birthday and naturally got a lot of questions about it. Yes, it is a recent fad, stemming from the red velvet cupcakes that are oh-so-popular nowadays but it actually had quite some history.

The cake has been around since before the 1920s. While it's exact origins are hard to track down, it was made popular as a signature dessert of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. 
This moist and deliciously rich red cake has a flavor somewhere in between chocolate and vanilla. Ingredients vary but usually have buttermilk, butter or shortening, flour, cocoa powder, red food coloring, and vinegar. 
Briefly during WWII boiled beets were used to enhance the color of the cake but this was only for a short period of time. The red color (other than when enhanced with beets or food coloring) is actually a reaction of the vinegar and buttermilk revealing red anthocyanin in the cocoa. Nowadays though with the widely spread "Dutch Processed" cocoa that is more alkaline, the red color is not as pronounced, hence the addition of food coloring
A common misconception, one that I subscribed to until I looked it up, is that the red velvet cake traditionally is made with cream cheese frosting. The typical frosting actually used to be a butter roux, or cooked flour frosting. However nowadays its usually seen with cream cheese (the tartness of the frosting offsets the richness of the cake so well!) or buttercream.

RED VELVET CAKE

Yield: One 8" cake

1 1/2 c vegetable oil

1 c buttermilk

2 eggs, at room temp

2 Tbsp red food coloring

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp vinegar, white distilled

1 1/2 c granulated sugar

1/4 c cocoa powder

3 1/8 c all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Butter and flour (or your preferred method of greasing pans) three 8" round cake pans.

2. In a mixer on low combine oil, buttermilk, eggs, vanilla, food coloring, and vinegar.

3. In a separate bowl sift together sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt.

4. Add drys to wet in two parts mixing on low. Increase speed to medium and mix until batter is smooth and shiny.

5. Distribute batter evenly between pans. Bake 25-30 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cool completely.

CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

1 lb cream cheese, cubed at room temp

1 c unsalted butter, cubed at room temp

1 tsp vanilla extract

5 c powdered sugar, sifted

1. Mix butter until smooth, add cream cheese. Make sure there are no lumps in the butter-cream cheese mixture!

2. Add powdered sugar one cup at a time until all incorporated. Then add vanilla extract.
Assembly:
1. Once the cakes are completely cool, trim excess (cutting off the rounded tops of cakes makes it's much easier to make a flat cake) and brush off crumbs.
2. Spread a thin layer of frosting between each layer of cake (I recommend keeping this thin so that the frosting doesn't overpower the red velvet flavor).
3. Finish off the top and sides of cake and decorate as you see fit. Can pipe shells, dots, stars or use red velvet crumbs.