Red Velvet Cake

Apparently in the original recipe the reddish colour came from the interaction of old school cocoa (not today's most common dutch process stuff) and the vinegar. These days people want a really vibrant red colour so they go hog wild with the food colouring. I got this recipe from an old friend, not sure what her source was but if anyone recognizes it let me know. The southern connotation of the recipe seems a bit suspect and movie based, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt I suppose.

The traditional (and awesome) way to ice this cake is with cream cheese icing, but feel free to experiment otherwise.

Yield

One triple layer cake (i.e. have three 9 inch round cakepans ready)

Red Velvet Cake

Ingredients(Cake)

• 2 cups Canola Oil
• 3 Lg. Eggs
• 1/3 Cup of Real cocoa
• 1 1/3 Cup of Buttermilk
• 1 tsp Salt
• 3.5 Cups of Self Rising Flour
• 3 tsp Butter
• 2.25 Cups of Sugar
• 1 tsp Vanilla
• 2 tsp Vinegar
• 2 tsp Baking Soda
• Lots of food colouring

Method

• grease baking pans (9 inch round in my case) and preheat oven to 350F

• Mix cocoa, flour, sugar by whisking together.

• In seperate bowl (or mixer) beat together eggs sugar and oil.

• at this point add your food colouring. I heartily suggest you use the gel kind. Despite using a ton of the old type stuff I still didn't have complete colour as you'll see in later shots.

• Add Vanilla, then slowly mix in the dry ingredient mix and the buttermilk, alternating the two

• combine vinegar with baking soda, then add the foam to the mixture and mix quickly for about 15 seconds

• Pour batter into cake pans and bake until a tester comes out clean. (Note the optional parchment bottoms, though in this case my assistant didn't understand i wanted just bottoms and did this. Turned out fine with the trimming later though.

Cream Cheese Icing

Obvious this works well on any number of other things. I'd half the amounts for smaller cakes though

Ingredients

• 2 standard packages of cream cheese, leave it out to soften as you make the cake
• 2 sticks of butter, ditto
• 8 Cups of Icing Sugar (preferably sifted)
• splash of vanilla
• Orange Zest (optional)

• Cream the butter and cheese together, then blend in the sugar bit by bit.

• add the vanilla, zest and any colouring you want (red and white is pretty enough in my opinion, plus god knows there's enough artificial colour in the cake) My mother also likes to add a shot of coffee and a touch of cocoa instead of the vanilla and make mocha cream cheese icing.

Assemble the Cake

• Once the cakes have cooled for 15-20 mins, pop them out of the pans and let cool. choosing the most regular shaped one use it as your base.

• Use a bread knife to flatten the top then smear a generous layer of icing.

• Repeat for next layer

• Once you have your triple tower you may need to trim your edges to match them (I certainly did thanks to a baker's helper mistake :p)

• Start your overall icing layer by doing a thin bottom layer called a crumb layer, making sure to cover every inch of the cake and create a smooth layer. Once this is done pop it in the freezer for a few minutes to solidify the icing. This will give you a smooth base with all the crumbs stuck down for your outer pretty layer of icing.

• Ice the rest of the cake as you desire. I just wanted the classic all white look though.