How To Make Red Velvet Cake From Scratch
The process is really simple, so even though the finished product may *look* fancy, dont be intimidated! Heres how youll bring it together in your own kitchen:
Why Should You Use This Red Velvet Cake
There are 3 more specific things about this recipe which might be a bit different to other Red Velvet recipes you have seen, but theres a reason for it.
1. Cake flour its a must! Its key to achieving that soft silky sponge, just like what you get from posh bakeries. However, if you really cant find it, please see the notes for a substitute 2. Only 2 eggs Ive seen some recipes call for up to 5 eggs. I only use 2. Its enough to hold the cake together just fine any more than 2, and find the cake begins to start tasting eggy and3. Buttermilk For almost every other baking recipe that I make using buttermilk, I say that you can substitute with lemon juice + milk which, when left for 5 minutes, curdles to have the same effect as using buttermilk. Not for this recipe sorry! It is just not the same part of the reason mine was zara zara.
Oh, and one more rule. There is no substitute for Philadelphia Cream Cheese for the frosting. Ive tried better value store-brand cream cheese before. It is never the same. Promise.
I bake the layers in 2 separate tins, but if you dont have two tins, you can make one big one and cut the cake in half. And to make the layers nice and neat, I cut the dome top off.
I like to crumble the off cuts and use it to decorate the cake. I think it looks pretty, dont you? But thats purely optional!
How To Make Red Velvet Cake
This red velvet cake has been adapted from The New York Times, with slight adjustments to the ingredients and the addition of oil for an even softer, richer and buttery melt-in-your-mouth cake. We tested a few versions with just butter, some with only oil, and some with half a dozen eggs! Truthfully, the one we are publishing is the best and received high praise from everyone who tried it. Both young and old!
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So What Makes A Red Velvet Cake Different From A Chocolate Cake
“It’s not necessarily a chocolate lovers cake, it’s a red lovers cake,” says Kaija Knorr, private chef on Nantucket, Massachusetts, and owner of Cook in the Cottage. “It’s a one trick ponyif you wanted an amazing chocolate flavor, you’d go for a death by chocolate cake or similar cake.”
Although red velvet cake recipes call for cocoa powder, the cake is a far cry from chocolate cake. Red velvet cake has a lighter chocolate flavor than chocolate cake because it uses a couple tablespoons of cocoa powder instead of full-flavored chocolate bar squares.
Additionally, the red cake usually includes acidic ingredientseither buttermilk or vinegarsomething you don’t find in a standard chocolate cake.
And most obviously, red velvet cake isn’t brown like a rich chocolate cake is. Typically, a red velvet cake is topped with a cream cheese-based frosting rather than a chocolate frosting, says Knorr, so that’s the most obvious difference between the desserts besides the color.
Frequently Asked Questions About This Red Velvet Cake Recipe
Can this recipe be made into cupcakes? Yes you can definitely use this recipe for cupcakes. I have made them many times and they turn out really well. Bake for 5 minutes on 400ºF then reduce to 350ºF for 10-15 minutes or until the cupcakes are set in the center. Do not fill cupcake liners more than 2/3 of the way full or they will overflow and collapse.
What can I use if I dont have buttermilk? You can use an equal amount of sour cream or you can add 1 Tbsp of vinegar into regular milk and let it sit a few minutes until it starts to curdle to make homemade buttermilk.
Can I leave out the red food coloring? Yes you can but the cake will not be very red on the inside.
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Red Velvet Vs Devils Food
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Theres a widely believed myth that red velvet is just devils food with food coloring. This couldnt be further from the truthunique ingredients used in each traditional recipe make them two completely different cakes.
Devils food cake is a dense, rich type of chocolate layer cake. Its name comes from a simple fact: It is, quite literally, the opposite of the light and airy, white or yellow angel food cake. Its often made with sour cream and coffee to ensure a dense texture and intense chocolate flavor.
It also typically calls for Dutch-process cocoa .
Red velvet cakes signature tang comes from vinegar, an ingredient that isnt often found in devils food or classic chocolate cakes, and buttermilk. Red velvet recipes almost always call for natural cocoa to enhance its red color.
Here’s The Main Difference Between Red Velvet And Chocolate Cake
- There’s more to red velvet cake than just the added food coloring.
- Red velvet is made with cocoa powder, vinegar and buttermilk.
- The chemical reaction between these ingredients help give the cake a deep maroon color that is often enhanced by extra food coloring.
As someone who has eaten their fair share of cakes and cupcakes, I’ve never known the difference between red velvet vs chocolate cake. I have always assumed that they were the same apart from the red food dye in the red velvet.
I love both types of cakes, but for different reasons. A red velvet cake, to me, is more special than a regular chocolate cake. It may be due to its unique color, or to the traditional cream cheese frosting on top. Even though I have indulged on both, I still don’t know the difference between the two. Let’s find out together.
What even is Red Velvet?
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Looking For More Delicious Cake Recipes
Welcome to Great Grub, Delicious Treats! Hello, my name is Terri and I’m so glad you stopped by. I’m a self taught cook/foodie at heart, mom to three kids, photographer and have a love for amazing food. I left my full time job of being a hospice admissions RN, which was super tough and extremely sad, and at times, very rewarding to be there for the patients and families to blog full time which I absolutely love. I hope you enjoy, and check out, all of the delicious recipes on my site while you’re here! And don’t forget to sign up to receive every new recipe right to your email. Thanks again for stopping by! 🙂
What Gives Red Velvet Cake Its Flavor
The distinct flavors of red velvet cake come from the buttermilk, vinegar, cocoa powder, and cream cheese frosting. Some red velvet cake recipes use only a tablespoon or two of cocoa powder, giving virtually no chocolate flavor. This leads some people to think that red velvet cake is simply a white cake dyed red. A true red velvet cake is a distinct chocolate flavor in addition to a slight acidic flavor.
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What Is Red Velvet Cake Made Of Secrets Revealed
If you’re new here, you may want to learn how to decorate cakes . Thanks for visiting!
Hi Sandra here from wonderlandcakesbw.com weve been making cakes in Botswana for over 5 years.
One of the most common questions people ask when looking to bake a cake is what is red velvet cake made of So in this article Ill show you ingredients to make red velvet cake plus the steps involved.
The red velvet cake is a red cake that can vary from dark red to bright or red-brown which usually has interspersed layers of cake and cream.
If you want to learn how to prepare the famous red velvet cake, follow the recipe shared below. Youll see how easy it is to cook with wonderlandcakesbw.com
What You Will Learn:
Where Did Red Velvet Come From
First appearing in some variation in the 1800s, the cake had a mahogany look to it that was similar to devil’s food cake.
The cake got a second wind with The Great Depression. A more subtle red velvet cake was a good way to make use of the dye that people could not afford during the tough financial times. No one was asking what is red velvet, but more so just comparing the softer texture to that of velvet due to the dye and butter recipe used at the time.
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What Is Red Velvet Cake Made Of
The main ingredients in red velvet cake are butter, sugar, flour, eggs, unsweetened cocoa, baking powder, sometimes buttermilk, and, most importantly, a generous amount of red food coloring to give the cake its typical color. Some recipes add cooked red beets to the batter to enhance the red color or vinegar to increase the cake’s acidity and aid the leavening process.
Red Velvet Cake Recipe Tried And Tested Favourite
This Red Velvet Cake has been taste tested and given a big thumbs up by many people because its a rather large cake and Ive made it 5 times in the last two weeks.
FIVE TIMES??!!, I hear you exclaim . Youre MAD!!
If getting this cake exactly to my taste, as close as I can get it to the cakes you get from posh bakeries, and ensuring it works using both US and metric measures means that Im a mad baker, Ill take that title.
Besides, Im really enjoying baking at the moment. There is something so satisfying about making something as pretty as Red Velvet Cake.
To tell you the honest truth, the reason I made it so many times in recent weeks is because my original recipe got a so-so response from the two toughest taste-testers I know: my mother and brother.
The sponge is zara-zara, my mother declared on first bite.
What the.?? Zara-zara? What on earth does that mean??
Zara-zara means rough in Japanese. The Japanese language has a handful of words which sound like what it means. Zara-zara being a perfect example. Usually it cracks me up. Not that day.
I gasped, indignant, and grabbed a spoon to shovel a bite into my mouth, ready to argue. And I realised she was right. It was not as velvety as it could be. As it should be.
NOT HAPPY.
So I improved it.
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Is The Red Velvet Cake Southern
As the cake recipe sifted through kitchens and cooks in the 1920s and 1930s, it picked up an iconic Southern ingredient, buttermilk, which further amplified the cake’s natural tanginessand its acidity. Combined with the cocoa that was available at the time, the cake had a remarkably red shade.
In the 1930s, the Waldorf-Astoria, a famed New York City hotel, began serving red velvet cake. Indeed, it’s credited with the creation of the cake, but as the research shows, they only capitalized on a cake that was already somewhat known throughout the country.
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Around this same time, Eaton’s department store in Toronto, a ritzy establishment by any measure, began selling red velvet cake. They, however, credited Lady Eaton as the creator.
But these red-tinted velvet cakes would not likely resemble the vibrant red cakes we know and adore today. No, that color only came about as a result of a World War II-era creation: red food coloring.
And this, it turns out, is where the South has a role to play.
Down in Texas, John A. Adams, a businessman who made his livelihood selling food-grade extracts and dyes, was looking for a product he could sell in World War II-era America, when food rations limited options for many goods. Cocoa was scarce, which meant the natural red hue of the cake wasn’t always possible. Cooks were turning to beet juice or pureed beets for color.
Red Velvet Cake Has Roots In The Victorian Era
Apparently, red velvet cake wasn’t always red, says Melissa Walnock, executive pastry chef and the instructor at The Culinary Institute of America’s Apple Pie Bakery Café, a public restaurant/café that is also a classroom for the college’s baking and pastry arts majors. It started out simply as “velvet cake.”
“The velvet cake is said to have originated in the Victorian Age and was considered a fancy dessert,” Walnock says. “The velvet in the name was meant to describe the texture of the cake.”
Apparently, cooks discovered that adding almond flour, cornstarch, or cocoa to the cake mix would soften the protein in the flour, which resulted in a finer-textured cake than cakes made entirely of regular flour, according to The New York Times. So the cocoa wasn’t actually used in these recipes to make a chocolate cake it was actually used as an ingredient to change the texture.
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What Does Red Velvet Cake Taste Like
Red velvet cake tastes like a light chocolate cake with vanilla buttermilk notes. Its a signature flavor that is well-loved in the south. Velvet cakes have a tender crumb and always consist of buttermilk and distilled vinegar. Check out this lemon velvet cake below for a different spin!
This red velvet cake recipe is SUPERB!!!! And it passes the stick to the back of the fork test like a champ!
Adding a bit of coffee to the batter isnt traditional for red velvet cakes but it adds another layer of flavor and really hypes up the chocolatey taste to perfection. Not to mention the extra liquid makes this cake do doggone soft so dont skip it!
Even if you have to run to Mickey Ds or the gas station to get a cup of coffee! I prefer flavored coffee. When I make this cake for people I always use vanilla biscotti or chocolate-flavored coffee. But plain will do just fine too.
Oh and dont worry, you cant taste the coffee.
Want cupcakes? Check out these red velvet cupcakes!