Red Velvet Layer Cake: Next Steps
Now that youve baked your cake, here are some more useful cake tips and recipes, for your reference:
- Here is my post on how to frost and decorate a layer cake, and what tools every home baker should have to make it beautiful
- Here is my recipe for classic vanilla buttercream frosting, enough to full and coat the cake, or enough for all of the cupcakes.
- If you are feeling a bit more ambitious, heres the recipe for my Swiss meringue buttercream. Swiss meringue buttercream is made with egg whites and hot sugar for a fluffy, silky buttercream thats less cloying than frosting can taste.
Why Beets For A No
Beets have a gorgeous purple/red color, so deep and vibrant it almost seems unnatural! They are also full of healthy stuff like folate, manganese, and vitamin C, but really, its the color we care about here. After much research, it seems that the key to a naturally red cake using beets is acidity. Ill save you most of the science talk, but without the proper acidic pH, the beets will turn brown. This means we need to incorporate things like vinegar, buttermilk, yogurt or citrus.
I used white wine vinegar, which has a 6% acidity compared to regular distilled or apple cider vinegar which is 5%, and orange juice. I also used baking powder instead of baking soda, as it has a higher pH due to the cream of tartar.
The final product is incredibly delicious. I actually said wow out loud while standing in the kitchen after the first taste. I will be honest- I was not expecting much. I thought it would be too tangy from the vinegar and too earthy from the beets, but it is delightfully sweet! The chocolate flavor floats lightly, not too powerful but definitely there, and the crumb is moist and dense, but not heavy. This recipe for Red Velvet Cake no dye is one you will definitely want to try and keep!
Naturally Red Velvet Cake With Ermine Icing
This old fashioned Red Velvet Cake recipe is moist and fluffy. It’s frosted with classic Ermine icing and gets its red color from beets which is how this classic cake was originally made. How was red velvet cake originally…
This old fashioned Red Velvet Cake recipe is moist and fluffy. Its frosted with classic Ermine icing and gets its red color from beets which is how this classic cake was originally made.
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Why Is Red Velvet Cake Red
The tale of how this uniquely American dessert got its striking hue requires a bit of a history lesson.
You may have heard it said that red velvet cake is just chocolate cake with the addition of red food coloring, but that is actually not the case. The cake’s classic red hue actually came as a by-product of the combination of ingredients used to create its signature “velvety” texture. Let’s look at the layered history of this iconic cake.
How Do I Make Beet Puree

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Directions For The Cream Cheese Frosting:
- Chill the cream and all equipment thoroughly, especially in hot weather. If the cream is too warm, it is hard to whip it and it curdles easily.
- Whip the cream with sifted sugar powder . Use the whip attachment of your mixer and run the machine at medium speed.
Do not overwhip. Stop beating when the cream forms peaks that hold their shape. If the cream is whipped longer, it first becomes grainy and then curdles .
- Here we need to slightly under beat the cream, because we are going to mix it with mascarpone cheese later, and the action of mixing whips it more and may overbeat it.
- Slightly whip the mascarpone cheese in a separate bowl, it should have a creamy and smooth texture.
- Combine the whipped cream and mascarpone cheese, whip the cream at a low speed until well blended, do not overwhip.
- Place the cream in a pastry bag with a tip of your choice, if you are not going to use it immediately, store it in a refrigerator.
Whats In Eggless Red Velvet Cake
Fresh beet puree This really needs to be made from raw beets. Thats because when you oven roast or cook beets, they lose some of their color and brown easier when added to cake. If you want your cake to come out as red as possible, skip the cooking method and simply puree them raw.
Coconut oil Because coconut oil is semi-solid at room temperature, its similar to butter in baked goods. The coconut oil helps moisten the healthy red velvet cake but also keeps it from becoming crumbly when its cooled down.
Avocado oil A heart-healthy oil thats perfect for baking. It withstands high heat, and has a super mild taste, so it doesnt add any weird flavors when you bake a cake with it.
White vinegar This adds acidity to the batter, helping to keep the beets red and your cake from turning brown.
Lemon juice A nice alternative to vinegar because it still adds acidity to the red velvet cake without having to add too much vinegary flavor to the cake batter.
Vanilla extract A classic flavor additive for red velvet cake. A hint of vanilla in the batter makes this cake extra delicious.
Buttermilk This keeps the batter more acidic, and helps the cake stay red and not brown. You need buttermilk if you want a naturally colored red velvet cake.
Whole wheat pastry flour A high protein, high fiber flour that is fine enough for baked goods. I almost always use it when I bake, and it balances the cake flour out nicely.
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Why Is My Naturally Red Velvet Cake Brown
This is the most common problem when making a red velvet cake from scratch with beets. If your eggless red velvet cake turned brown, one of these issues may be the problem:
Subtly Sweet Tender And Tangy This Red Velvet Cake Shines With Or Without Food Coloring
For the better part of the past century, red velvet cake has appeared in cookbooks and on menus, dazzling diners with its lipstick-red and snow-white layers. Popular year-round, today, the cake is often seen at celebrations and holidays where red makes a showing, including Christmas, Valentines Day and Juneteenth.
This versatile version pulls from generations of red velvet recipes for a cake thats well-balanced and not too sweet. Its also supremely tender and, as the name declares, velvety in texture.
A combination of unsalted butter and vegetable oil give it flavor and ensure a moist cake. A bit of baking soda gives it just enough lift, but not so much that the batter bubbles over or domes as it bakes. Cocoa powder and lots of vanilla provide dark or fruity chocolate notes alongside musky vanilla.
The only question is, how red do you like your red velvet? This recipe can do it all.
For a mahogany-colored cake, use raw cocoa powder in combination with buttermilk. The acidity in the buttermilk will react with the anthocyanins in the cocoa to give the cake a reddish hue.
Want a deeper magenta tint? Use beet juice. Easily found at most supermarkets, it adds moisture and natural color, but thanks to its interactions with the other ingredients in the cake batter, leaves the earthy flavor of beets behind.
For the frosting
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Gluten Free Red Velvet Cupcakes & Red Velvet Sheet Cake
This recipe makes a petite 6-inch cake with 2 layers, perfect for about 8 servings of cake, with a high frosting to cake ratio because, as we’ve discussed, CREAM CHEESE FROSTING. But you could easily double the recipe and bake this cake in a 9-inch square pan for a small red velvet sheet cake. A single batch of frosting should be plenty for a single layer cake. To feed a crowd, triple the cake recipe and double the frosting, and prepare in a 9×12-inch pan. For red velvet cupcakes, fill 6-8 muffin cups two-thirds of the way with batter and decrease the baking time as needed.
Can I Make Eggless Red Velvet Cupcakes With This Recipe
Yes you can! This recipe will make 12 eggless red velvet cupcakes!
Simply make the batter as instructed, then fill each cupcake tin about 3/4 of the way full. Bake for 20-22 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Allow your red velvet cupcakes to cool completely, then frost with the cream cheese frosting!
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How To Make Eggless Red Velvet Cake
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Red Food Coloring Substitute For Red Velvet Cake
To achieve the redness in the famous red velvet cake, you need food coloring. otherwise, youll just have a cake with cocoa. In case you dont have any artificial red color to put in your mixture, we have the solution for you.
You can add natural red food color with unrefined sugar to save the recipe. The juices that can be derived from some fruits or beet can help you as well.
A Choose Your Frosting Adventure
Much like the hue of the cake, red velvet frosting affections have changed with the times and trends. A boiled or roux-based frosting known as Ermine frosting was popular during the 1800s and again during World War II, because the frosting uses less butter and sugar than most frostings. Cream cheese frosting didnt become popular until the 1960s as a topping for carrot cake, when it presumably made its way onto red velvet cakes as well. My hunch as to how bakers moved from ermine frosting to cream cheese is simply that both frostings are a creamy white, with a slight grain, and a swirling finish.
Prepare the cake pans and heat the oven
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Healthy Eggless Red Velvet Cake
For this healthy red velvet cake, I used beets for the natural color, and was able to avoid using an entire bottle of red food dye. I cant even imagine using that much food dye honestly.
I also used heart-healthy oils, a combination of whole wheat pastry flour and cake flour to make this red velvet cake higher in fiber and nutrition without sacrificing too much texture.
Unfortunately, I did use white sugar, but only for the color aspect. Use coconut sugar if youre not too concerned with the color of this eggless red velvet cake.
Total nutritional content per serving is:
- Calories: 476 calories
- 4cupspowdered sugar
Seeing Red Not Anymore
This no-dye red velvet cake recipe is made without food coloring for a moist, sweet Southern layer cake that lets cocoas natural ruddiness shine through.
Admission: I do not like chocolate. Never have. I held this secret shame with me throughout pastry school, when I would smile through the pain of tasting our chocolate truffles or dark chocolate mousse assignments. I became an expert in hiding my just a sliver slice on the plate at a birthday party. Chocolate just tastes very bitter to me. But I have two exceptions: 1) Reeses Cups, and 2) this cake.
This No-Dye Red Velvet Layer Cake Recipe is one of my favorites: moist, full of sweet cocoa flavor and made without Day-Glo red food coloring, so the cakes natural warm reddish-brown hue can shine.
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