Red Velvet Cake...

Red Velvet Cake is a mellow chocolate cake with an intense red color. A white cream cheese icing is traditional, preferably applied with such care that when you cut it, the cake’s redness is a surprise.

A Southern specialty, the Red Velvet Cake owes its red color to history. Originally, its deep red color was thought to be due to a reaction between early varieties of cocoa and baking soda. But this reaction also gave the cake a soapy taste. Thereafter, cooks and bakers must have opted for food color or an edible red dye to get the effect. In the Southern states, where the Red Velvet Cake originated, it was made with cocoa and beet, hence the original red color effect. The contrasting white frosting completes the effect that has been related to the contrast between Good and Evil.

From the time I was old enough to speak my will, I would ask for a Red Velvet Cake for dessert. Why? Because it was the cake my mother always made at Christmas; thus I equated Red Velvet Cake with wrapped presents & toys ~ a little of the “evil wanting good”.

The recipe was first published in Mrs. Rorder's New Cook Book by Sarah Tyson Rorer, and found its way across magazines and cookbooks by 1913. The Waldorf Astoria Hotel has often been credited for developing this delicious dessert, but the venue hasn't provided enough proof to support its status as the world's first red velvet cake producer. Today, the hotel still serves a rich Red Velvet Cake that has many similarities to the original recipe. Here is a classic recipe used for at least four generation in my family. I hope you will give this recipe a try. Enjoy!

Classic Red Velvet Cake

Cake:
1½ cups sugar
½ cup shortening
2 eggs
2½ cups cake flour
1 cup butter milk
2 ounces red food coloring
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon salt
1½ teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon soda
1 tablespoon vinegar

In a mixing bowl, cream sugar, shortening and eggs. Gradually stir in flour and buttermilk. Combine food coloring, cocoa, salt and vanilla. Stir into flour mixture. Dissolve soda in vinegar and stir into batter.
Pour batter into 3 greased layer pans. Bake at 350° F for 25 minutes. Cool on wire racks.

Cream Cheese Icing:
2 8-ounce packages cream cheese
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
½ cup butter
1¾ cups confectioners' sugar, sifted

In a large bowl, beat cheese, vanilla, butter and sugar; until light and fluffy. Spread icing between layers, on top and side of cake. Serve at room temperature.

Serves 12


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George’s notes:

• “It’s the Dolly Parton of cakes: a little bit tacky, but you love her,” said Angie Mosier, a food writer in Atlanta about the Classic Red Velvet Cake.
• In the 1989 film Steel Magnolias the groom's cake (another southern tradition) is a red velvet cake made in the shape of an armadillo.
• It has been told, that if a young lady sleeps with a slice of groom's cake under her pillow, she will supposedly dream of the man she will marry.
• In Canada a Red Velvet Cake was a signature dessert in the restaurants and bakeries of the Eaton’s department store chain in the 1940s and 1950s. Promoted as an "exclusive" Eaton's recipe, with employees who knew the recipe sworn to silence, many mistakenly believed the cake to be the invention of the department store matriarch, Lady Eaton.