Red Velvet Cake

It wasn't until he was frosting this that Wayne realized it's really just a regular made-from-scratch chocolate cake! He also thought there should be an interesting backstory to the recipe, so decided to read a bit about its history.  Hundreds of years ago, cakes were heavy and dense. Apparently at some point the upper class wanted a "nice" dessert to serve at their dinner parties. Someone discovered that adding cocoa to cake batter gave it a smoother texture, which was called "velvet" by them. In addition, the chemical reaction between the cocoa and the acid in the cake batter. Today's cocoa powder is made using a different process, which doesn't cause the same reaction, so red food coloring is added instead. Isn't all this fascinating?

Red Velvet Cake

• 1/2 cup butter or margarine
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup buttermilk or sour milk
• 2 tablespoons (1 ounce bottle) red food color
• 2 cups flour
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar
• 1 can (16 ounces) vanilla frosting
• semi-sweet mini chocolate chips or milk chocolate chips, optional

Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl. Add eggs and vanilla and beat well. Stir buttermilk and food coloring together. Combine flour, cocoa and salt; add alternately to butter mixture with buttermilk mixture. Stir in baking soda and vinegar. Pour into 9x13 greased pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes. Cool completely in pan on wire rack. Frost; garnish with chocolate chips if desired.

Surprisingly, I think I'll prefer it without the chocolate chips on top. They add a hard crunch which detracts from the smooth texture of the cake and frosting. A drizzle of ganache might be fabulous, though, as a garnish.

This recipe also makes great cupcakes. Bake for 22 minutes. For these cupcakes, instead of using a bottle of red food coloring, I used 2 tablespoons of water and 1/4 teaspoon of blue gel food dye. For the record, blue and chocolate turns a bit gray, but the combination for red would probably work well.