Red Velvet Cake Recipe

CAKE

2 1/2 c flour
1 1/2 c sugar
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 t cocoa powder
1 1/2 c vegetable oil
1 c buttermilk, room temperature
2 eggs, room temperature
2 T red food coloring (optional)
1 t white distilled vinegar
1 t vanilla


FROSTING

1 lb cream cheese, soft
4 c confectioner's sugar, sifted
2 sticks butter, soft
1 t vanilla


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and lightly Crisco/flour 3 (9 x 1 1/2") round cake pans. In a large bowl sift together flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder. In another bowl whisk together the oil, buttermilk, eggs, food coloring, vinegar and vanilla. Mix dry and wet until just combined and smooth. Divide the batter among the cake pans and place in the oven evenly spaced apart. Bake 30 minutes or until the cake pulls away from the pan and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove cakes from oven and run a knife around the edges. Invert onto a cooling rack with paper towel on top.

For frosting, whip all but vanilla until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and mix. Put in refrigerator briefly until a bit stiffer. Start frosting cake layers, both in between and around the whole surface.

Notes:

• Grease the dish way more than you think. This is good because 1) there's no way anything will stick, especially in the corners, and 2) you'll get that lovely buttery crust on the edge pieces!

• If you keep your butter in the fridge and don't want to wait a hundred years for it to come to room temperature, simply but what you need on a dish in the microwave and set for 20-25 seconds (go with less time first). This will make the butter soft but not melt it.
• Since cream cheese is usually cold when you get it, if you don't want to wait for it to come to room temperature simply put in a bowl in the microwave for 25-30 seconds. This will get it nice and mashy and very easy to mix!

Red Velvet Cake

Hey! Sorry I've been gone awhile...for Thanksgiving I made 100 truffles for James and his family, so I was really worn out from baking! Plus we had about half left over, so we'd been eating those over the course of a few weeks, and when they were gone I made baked apples.

In any case, Dec 13 was my birthday and I wanted to make a cake for myself...a real cake! The night before I made a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. Some people told me I should have had my boyfriend make it, but I not only enjoy it but also didn't really care that much. So here it is!

Essentially a red velvet cake is a mildy sweet cake made with buttermilk and a small amount of cocoa. It's a white cake that, when red food coloring is added, makes it a red velvet. However, since I neither cared nor had any in the house, I didn't add any red food coloring to my cake. I suppose this makes it a white velvet cake instead.

Again, this is a pretty easy recipe: mix dry, mix wet, combine. Because the wet ingredient mixture has vinegar in it and the dry has baking soda, there will be some bubbling happening when you combine them. Also, when making a cake it really is best to sift all your flours before adding to the mix. It loosens up any chunks that may be happening, which will ensure a more even texture to your cake. But to prevent the texture from becoming concrete and dense, you have to just mix the dry ingredients into the wet, and not create a solid mixture. I mixed until I couldn't see any white on the top, then stopped.

The recipe called for 3 layers, but I only had 1 round pan, so I did it in 2 layers instead. I tried to make them even, but as you will see one is definitely larger than the other. In any case, while this is baking I made the cream cheese frosting. Because the recipe called for 2 sticks of butter, I used butter-flavored margarine instead. I figured the frosting wasn't important enough to use 2 sticks on. I also had to mix this with cream cheese and some sugar by hand (since I don't have a mixer), and this sucked, lemme tell you. In any case you want this pretty thoroughly mixed and light. Below I have mixed and then whipped:

I put this frosting in the fridge to set a bit. One thing I ran into when cooling the cake layers was when I turned them upside down from the pan onto a cooling rack. The weight of the cake (though not very heavy) combined with its softness pressed the cake down on the wire rack...making it stick! When doing this make sure to put a paper towel down on top of the cooling rack to prevent this. When the cakes were done and cooled, I started layering the frosting!

I left this in the fridge overnight to set....but mostly because I didn't want to be tempted to eat it the night before my birthday! Finally yesterday, along with some Riesling and very good pizza, we sliced some up. It was so good! Very fluffy texture and mild flavor. Mmm!