So, what is actually a Red Velvet Cake?
A Red velvet cake is a cake with a dark red, bright red or red-brown color. It is usually prepared as a layer cake somewhere between vanilla and chocolate in flavor, topped with a creamy white icing. Common ingredients are buttermilk, butter, flour, cocoa, beetroot or tomato soup or red food colouring; although beetroot is traditionally used, many prefer food coloring since it is seen as more appealing. The amount of cocoa used varies in different recipes. A typical frosting is a butter roux (also known as a cooked flour frosting). Cream cheese or buttercream frostings are also used. A red velvet cake was a signature dessert at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City during the 1920s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_velvet_cake
To be honest RVC (short for Red Velvet Cakes), is only a chocolate cakes with red dye (naturally with bit, or un-natural with red dye), the choice are yours. I love it ever since all the hollywood star been eating it and i am the type that always try out things that most celebs find it best. A friend of mine owned a bakery in Indonesia and i asked her to make bake me a Red Velvet cakes and she told me that it is only an ordinary chocolate cakes but in Red, nothing special about it...and she is not fond of it.
I love to see and check it plenty of RCV recipe online, reading it, make me hungry....I haven't got the chance & time to bake one myself, i prefer to buy it. I should try to bake it one day to compare the taste and see how it turns out. I am confident in baking chocolate cakes, cookies, tiramisu but never got the guts to try to make RCV. I should do it....
For those who wants to give it a try, i posted a recipe below...
Adapted from "The Confetti Cakes Cookbook" by Elisa Strauss
(Little, Brown, to be published in May).
Time: 90 minutes, plus cooling
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
3½ cups cake flour
½ cup unsweetened cocoa (not Dutch process)
1½ teaspoons salt
2 cups canola oil
2¼ cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
6 tablespoons (3 ounces) red food coloring
1½ teaspoons vanilla
1¼ cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons baking soda
2½ teaspoons white vinegar.
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place teaspoon of butter in each of 3 round 9-inch layer cake pans and place pans in oven for a few minutes until butter melts. Remove pans from oven, brush interior bottom and sides of each with butter and line bottoms with parchment.
2. Whisk cake flour, cocoa and salt in a bowl.
3. Place oil and sugar in bowl of an electric mixer and beat at medium speed until well-blended. Beat in eggs one at a time. With machine on low, very slowly add red food coloring. (Take care: it may splash.) Add vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk in two batches. Scrape down bowl and beat just long enough to combine.
4. Place baking soda in a small dish, stir in vinegar and add to batter with machine running. Beat for 10 seconds.
5. Divide batter among pans, place in oven and bake until a cake tester comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes. Let cool in pans 20 minutes. Then remove from pans, flip layers over and peel off parchment. Cool completely before frosting.
Yield: 3 cake layers.
Good luck! and happy Baking
(Little, Brown, to be published in May).
Time: 90 minutes, plus cooling
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
3½ cups cake flour
½ cup unsweetened cocoa (not Dutch process)
1½ teaspoons salt
2 cups canola oil
2¼ cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
6 tablespoons (3 ounces) red food coloring
1½ teaspoons vanilla
1¼ cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons baking soda
2½ teaspoons white vinegar.
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place teaspoon of butter in each of 3 round 9-inch layer cake pans and place pans in oven for a few minutes until butter melts. Remove pans from oven, brush interior bottom and sides of each with butter and line bottoms with parchment.
2. Whisk cake flour, cocoa and salt in a bowl.
3. Place oil and sugar in bowl of an electric mixer and beat at medium speed until well-blended. Beat in eggs one at a time. With machine on low, very slowly add red food coloring. (Take care: it may splash.) Add vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk in two batches. Scrape down bowl and beat just long enough to combine.
4. Place baking soda in a small dish, stir in vinegar and add to batter with machine running. Beat for 10 seconds.
5. Divide batter among pans, place in oven and bake until a cake tester comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes. Let cool in pans 20 minutes. Then remove from pans, flip layers over and peel off parchment. Cool completely before frosting.
Yield: 3 cake layers.
Good luck! and happy Baking
