Red for Valentine’s Day: Red Velvet Cake
February 13, 2008 by Marye Audet
Filed under Cakes
Note Added:
Update: I have developed a recipe that I like much MUCH better. The recipe is for cupcakes but you can double it and have enough for a layer cake (2 layers). … It can be found on this site at Red Velvet and Cheesecake Marbled Cupcakes.
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NOTE ADDED: If you want a REDDER cake you will need to use LESS chocolate in BOTH recipes. If you are planning on doing this for a special event where the color matters to you PLEASE bake a test cake to see how your color comes out. With the beet colored cake especially the color will be partially determined by the color of the beets you use! I suggest you read ALL the comments before deciding to bake this cake. Thanks.
If you have never heard of red velvet cake you probably live on another planet, or something. At the very least you have never watched Steel Magnolias.
Red Velvet cake is a southern thing, I think, but rapidly gaining favor across the country. Apparently the red color was a natural reaction between the acid in the buttermilk, and the cocoa that was made in the early part of the 1900s. During the depression bakers also used beets to add color to the cakes that lacked color due to butter and egg rationing (never mind the scarcity of chocolate).
It happens to be my oldest son’s favorite cake, or it was when he left home to join the Air Force 4 years ago. At this point he is a health food freak so probably power bars are what he likes the best.
It always seemed a Christmas Cake to me, but lately I have seen it turn up around Valentine’s Day, and it makes sense. Most of the time the red color is created by adding a bottle of red food color. If you have issues with food dyes then consider the second recipe, a traditional one, made with beets.
The picture is from Swiss Colony . I just didn’t get time to make one. You can do it in several layers (more traditional and very impressive) or just two. The frosting is most often cream cheese, and that is what I am using because it is my favorite. This page licensed to B5 media, for exclusive use on Baking Delights, (http://bakingdelights.com), written by Marye Audet. Any other use constitutes fraud. If you are reading this on another website, the material is stolen content.
Red Velvet Cake Recipe (made with red food coloring)
5 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
3 ounces red food coloring
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon white vinegar
Grease and flour two 9 inch round pans.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees .
Make a paste of cocoa and food coloring. Set aside.
Combine the buttermilk, salt and vanilla.
In a large bowl, cream together the oil and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
Stir in the cocoa mixture. Beat until well mixed and batter is evenly colored.
Beat in the buttermilk mixture alternately with the flour, mixing just until incorporated. Stir together baking soda and vinegar, then gently fold into the cake batter.
Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
Allow to cool completely before frosting.
Traditional Red Velvet Cake Recipe ( made with beets)
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1 c pureed cooked beets
2 1/4 cups flour
1/3 cup cocoa
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1 1/4 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
2/3 cup buttermilk
2 tsp. cider vinegar
Preheat oven to 350 degrees .
Butter and flour two 9 inch cake pans.
Melt chocolate in double boiler and set aside .
Sift together flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt.
In a bowl beat butter, sugars, eggs and vanilla until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Beat in chocolate. In four steps, alternately beat in flour mixture and buttermilk mixed with vinegar , beginning and ending with flour. Beat until incorporated. Add pureed beets and mix until well blended.
Divide the batter between the pans. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until cake tester inserted in center comes out clean and top of cake springs back when lightly pressed.
Cool cakes in pans on wire racks for 10 minutes and invert onto racks to cool completely.
To Make 4 layers:
Carefully slice each layer in half when cool.
Cream Cheese Frosting
16 oz cold cream cheese
1/2 c unsalted butter, softened
1 Tbs vanilla
Confectioners sugar (about 6-8 cups)
Beat cream cheese with softened butter and vanilla until combined. Gradually add 2 c. powdered sugar . Continue to add more powdered sugar until you reach a good consistency for spreading.
I LOVE red velvet cake! I will actually be making a red velvet wedding cake (not armadillo shaped) for a friends wedding in April.
Last Valentine’s day, I lightened this cake up a bit by baking it in the nordic ware rose bundt cake pan (or for cupcakes, the rose bundtlet pan). Rather than the traditional cream cheese frosting, I just gave them a light dusting with powdered sugar, garnished with mint leaves. They made for a wonderful presentation of a bright red rose cake…quite romantic. I sell my baked goods to friends and co-workers, and these were one of my best sellers last year!
Important note: if you do bake the red velvet in one of these specialty pans, make sure you use a liberal amount of a good quality cake release, otherwise the cakes love to stick in all those little crevices!!
traditional red velvet cake:
Too much chocolate- this recipe turns out dark brown, not red.
The baking directions were incorrect- rather than the 30-35 minutes, my cake was still liquid at this time and needed another half hour to be cooked. Opening the oven and testing the cake at this critical point could have caused the cake to fall- luckily I saw the ripples in the cake and carefully closed the door.
Who tested this recipe? Anyone?
I did Hal, Both of them, and had no problems. Sorry you had problems with it.
I suggest you revisit and retry this for yourself, as written. Perhaps there was a typo. With the addition of the melted chocolate, not present in the food coloring version, the beet-based cake is moist and fudgy, in fact the color of brownies, which would call for a longer baking time.
I have to say that the cake was tasty, though I was disappointed that the color was so dark, since I was counting on the red effect to go with a red theme. Considering the ingredients, I should really have known it would be dark, but I saw the picture above. Can you say that you have tried this recipe, using all that cocoa and chocolate, and gotten any recognizable shade of red, from pink to maroon? If you have then please tell me how you did it, because I need further instructions.
Hal- thatpicture is from swiss colony, that is clearly stated in the post.
I will bake this cake again and post the results..I have a seriously packed week this week..so i can’t promise it will be tomorrow.
I may well have made a typo :/ so check back..I will try to get to it within a week or so.
I am sorry it did not work for you. I will see what the problem is and get it posted.
Thanks for your patience.
I’m baking it as we speak (the first recipe)
and after 40mins, the cake does seem liquidy.
although I am aware that I should be leaving it in for a little longer because I’m using bigger pans,
maybe it’s also because of use of oil instead of butter?
I’ll come back a little later to follow up on how the cake turned out
Ann,
I haven’t had trouble but if you do let me know and I will pull the recipe. I can’t figure out what I am doing differently. Grrrr.
I am comparing mine with the one from food network and not seeing much difference.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/sara-moulton/southern-red-velvet-cake-recipe/index.html
please don’t pull the recipe out, it turned out DELICIOUS
because i was using larger pans, i had to wait a little longer, but it was so0o0 moist and tasty, my family loved it too. it wasn’t too sweet, and i had used an icing with cream& mascarpone cheese (taken from joyofbaking.com), but next time i’ll definitely try the cream cheese frosting with the cake made from actual beets. i’m excited to try give that a whirl.
thank you Marye for your recipes
YAY! Thank you Ann. Since someone else had had trouble I wondered if I was doing something different. Good to know. whew!
The beet recipe did turn out too dark, but delicious. It tastes like red velvet cake, definitely, it just doesn’t look red at all. I’m not sure how that happened as the batter did have a reddish hue to it once the beets were added. I will say it was a little disappointing to have gone to the effort of cooking, peeling, and pureeing beets only to get none of the desired color effect. Perhaps less of the melted chocolate or none at all would take care of this? I am not sure how much the flavor would suffer, but it does seem like the darknes of the chocolate is just too much for the beets to show. I’ll most likely try that next time I need a red velvet cake. This recipe does taste great, and I really like the use of beets as an alternative to food coloring. I know my girlfriend will still enjoy this on Valentine’s Day despite the color!
I just tried the traditional red velvet (beets recipe). After reading the posts, I decided to forgo the melted chocolate and only add the cocoa. When I added the beets, the batter had a reddish color to it, but just in case, I added about 3 tablespoons more of the puree. The cake tastes great, but it is the color of chocolate cake
, no red at all. Kinda disappointing since you go through all the work of peeling, boiling, and pureeing beets. Maybe, I’ll try even less chocolate, but I’m afraid I will sacrifice chocolate taste for color. I guess “red velvet” back in the good all days meant something different, and not necessarily real red color. Otherwise, I like the recipe. Didn’t have trouble with the baking. I also tried your gold cake and it is superb!
I have a recipe for red velvet -cheesecake marbled cupcakes. I made one batch with beets and the other with food color. The food color won.. I guess that is just the way it is. :/
Hi,
Could you tell me what is a cup in grams??
Thank you
Shekina I am sorry I have no clue.
a cup is 200 g for flour, 250 g for sugar. for apples/carrots/beets, just use the measure thats equal to ur 200g flour/250 sugar.
Can you replace the buttermilk with something else? We dont have that here.
Add vinegar to whole milk and let it stand for 10 minutes
Hello, what kind of vinegard? Apple, White Wine, plain or what?
And what measures? Lets say I have a cup of whole milk, then how much vinegard do I add?
After adding this, does the entire cup of whole milk then become buttermilk, which I can use for this cake? Or only parts of it?
any type is fine. about 1 tablespoon in the bottom of a one cup measure and then fill with milk. Use just like buttermilk
Im sorry to say that this recepie is not good enough.
Marye, thanks for teaching me how to make buttermilk. Im gonna use that alot in the future with american recepies. But there is too much oil in this recepie. It doesnt taste good.
Try this recipe..I had much better luck with it..just make it as cake rather than cupcakes… http://www.blisstree.com/bakingdelights/red-velvetcheesecake-marbled-cupcakes/