Red Velvet the cake, the myth, the legend
Many people think red velvet cake is just a type of chocolate cake with food coloring but it’s so much more. Not to mention its truly not southern either but, you better not tell any self respecting southern belle that. I realized while researching the history of red velvet cake it was more than I wanted to tackle in this post so we will dive deeper in the history a little later.
My Mom’s birthday was Monday and she requested a red velvet cake for her big day. My mom usually doesn’t request anything but she does have a major sweet tooth, she is always looking for extra cookies or sweets when I’m baking. Since I typically tell her I don’t have any extras I was definitely not going to let her down on her big day!
I broke out my tried and true recipe for red velvet. I adapted my recipe from the Southern Living cookbook 2004 and have made some minor tweaks for a more balanced cake in my opinion. Before we get into this recipe let me give you a little backstory on me and red velvet. Until I found this particular recipe, red velvet was my Achilles heel. I hated red velvet, every slice I had ever tasted and eaten was dry and lacked flavor. I still wanted to try my hand at making one. The first time I ever made a red velvet it was Christmas 2003, red velvet was my Pop’s favorite cake and I really wanted to surprise my family with my own cake. To make a long story short that cake was a disaster, disaster with a capital D!!! It was dense and dry as can be, we ended up throwing out the whole cake. A few years later while at a team building event I discovered this Southern Living recipe from a co-worker. I had never tasted a red velvet cake so moist, delicious and full of flavor before. Ever since then, this has been my go to recipe, it is perfect to me. Please try it out and let me know what you think.
Red Velvet Cake
Granulated Sugar 1 1/2 cup
Vegetable Oil 1 2/3 cup
Egg 2 each
Red Food color 1 1/2 oz
White Vinegar 1 tsp
Buttermilk 1 cup
Vanilla extract 1 tsp
Unsweetened cocoa 2 tbs
Baking soda 1 tsp
Salt 1 tsp
AP Flour 2 1/2 cup
Directions
Pre-heat oven to 350
In a medium bowl sift together all dry ingredients, flour, cocoa, soda and salt.
In a large mixing bowl combine oil and sugar and mix on medium speed until well combined, approximately 5 min. Add eggs one at a time mixing well after each addition. Add in food coloring and white vinegar mixing until combined.
Begin adding dry ingredients in three stages alternating with buttermilk, starting and ending with the dry ingredients. Add in vanilla and give the batter a good mix, approximately 1-2 min. Be sure not to over mix.
Pour batter into prepared cake or muffin tins and bake. This recipe makes approximately 3 lbs of cake batter so for my three layer birthday cake I used 7” cake pans thoroughly coated with Baker’s Joy pan release filled with 1 lb of batter per pan and baked for 40 min.
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