Red velvet cake

By a strange coincidence I started this blog a few days before my birthday. Actually, one of my first posts was about the ice cream cake my Mother used to do every year around my birthday .  This year, however, for some reason, I was not really in the mood for a creamy cold cake… I kept seeing red velvet cakes appearing on different TV shows and food magazines, much to the joy and delight of those who ate them. The New York Times described it as “a cake that can stop traffic”. If even the NY Times said it and Nigella had the recipe on her book and website, why not give it a go and try it for the dinner party?

As its own name says, the red velvet cake is red. Red in an unnatural shade of red. In case doubts that it should be red persist, it is layered with white frosting, to make the red go even redder. It is supposed to have a slight taste of cocoa and vanilla, and a velvety texture given by buttermilk. The red color is allegedly the result of the presence of anthocyanin in the cocoa, which becomes red in the presence of an acid, explaining the necessity of adding unusual ingredients in a cake like vinegar and buttermilk. Strictly speaking, the cocoa might turn to a reddish shade and become dark-red-brown…. To get the extra bright red, abundant food dye has to be added. No one knows for sure where the recipe comes from, whether it was created on the South of the United States or it was an experiment gone mad in a Canadian department store.  For sure, it seems to be a New World creation, as it is hardly ever seen on European cookbooks. In fact, I cannot remember ever seeing it for sale on this side of the Atlantic patisseries.

As this was a birthday cake, an elaborate decoration was expected. I had planned to do a flamenco style polka-dot pattern, being the number of red dots being equal to my age (approximately and vaguely equal- to avoid sticking candles on the cake, any excuse was worth trying). But… the butter cream was a bit more runny than it should have been, and though I had a perfect cylinder of marzipan to start with, cutting it in thin slices didn’t do any favors to its shape. It ended up as a Dali interpretation of a rustic Seville-olé red velvet cake (picture here). Per se, the name didn’t conceal the less-than-optimal decoration, but I earned  a lot points for imaginative and rhetoric culinary speech.

But, it all comes down to taste. And it tasted good. Very good, in fact: a very rich taste (not totally cocoa, but also not totally vanilla),  with a moist and sensuous texture. A pleasure as sinful and guilty as only cake can be.

Ingredients

Cake

• 2 cups shortening (=226g; I replaced it with butter)
• 3 cups of sugar (=600g)
• 4 eggs
• 4 ounces of red food coloring (I used 20ml in total)
• 1 tablespoon of cocoa
• 2 teaspoon salt
• 5 cups flour (=640g)
• 2 cups butter milk (=500ml)
• 2 teaspoon baking soda
• the seeds of 2 vanilla pods
• 2 tablespoons vinegar (I used white balsamic, for no reason in particular. I just happened to have it on my cupboard).

Butter cream (frosting)

Preheat oven to 180oC. Butter and line 3 9″ baking pans with parchment paper (I used 3 squared trays)Place melted butter and sugar in bowl and beat until light and fluffy (about 10 minutes). Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.

Make a paste of the food colouring, cocoa and salt (I never got a paste, as 20ml were not enough to bind with the cocoa). Add to butter mixture.Mix vanilla with buttermilk. Dissolve baking soda in vinegar, add to butter milk (it gets a bit fizzy – you might want to consider to use a larger bowl).

Sift and measure flour; add to creamed shortening alternating with buttermilk mixture ending with flour. Mix until smooth approx. 4-5 minutes.Pour into pans. Bake 35-40 minutes. Remove from oven, cool 10 minutes, then invert cakes onto cooling rack and to cool completely before frosting.

Frosting

Make a paste with flour and a small amount of the milk. Add remaining milk gradually, mixing until smooth. Cook in a double boiler at medium heat until thick (do not forget to stir while cooking to avoid burning. If it gets to hot, remove it from the heat and stir to cool it a bid. It should be a very slow simmer. At the end, it will be a very thick mixture at end, but if you can see lumps it is pass it through a fine sieve). Let cool.

Cream butter with icing sugar and vanilla. Beat until fluffy. Add cooled flour mixture 1 spoon at a time, beating well between additions.