Red Velvet Cake
Submitted by KitchenBarbaria... on July 22, 2012 at 3:37 am

A version of RVC that I'm still researching - this is the first attempt and it came out pretty well.
I like more chocolate in my RVC, so this has lots of cocoa.

100g vegetable shortening
300g sugar
230g CAKE flour
2 large eggs plus 1 egg yolk
20g of cocoa
1 tsp salt
2 oz. liquid red dye
1/2c plain yogurt + 1/2c milk, whisked together, OR 1 c buttermilk
1 tsp white vinegar
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda

Cream the sugar and shortening together.

Add eggs one at a time and beat briefly, just to mix.

Add the vanilla, the cocoa and the red food coloring if you are using it (I strongly recommend NOT using it) and mix just to blend.

Whisk together the flour and the salt.

Add the flour alternating with the milk/yogurt blend or the buttermilk.

Sprinkle with baking soda and pour the vinegar over batter.

Stir VERY GENTLY.

Immediately pour the batter into 2 - 9 inch cake pans.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 min. or until a cake tester or tooth pick comes out with just a crumb or two still clinging - more than that and it's underdone, if it actually comes out clean it's overdone.
Let cool in the pan for a few minutes before turning out on a wire rack

Let cool COMPLETELY before frosting.

I use a cooked buttercream frosting, which is actually the "traditional" frosting (not the cream cheese) but of course frost it with whatever you want.

This cake, when made with the food coloring, was actually a bit too moist for my preference. Personally I would leave the dye out - I don't need my RVC to actually be red, and when you use the dye, it tends to get all over everything and leave red marks and even stains. My next iteration of this recipe would have been to totally eliminate the dye; if you must use the dye, you might want to leave out the extra egg yolk. It just depends on your preference for how moist you like your cake.

If you make this with some other kind of flour other than the cake flour, you might want to retain the extra egg yolk as it is my experience this recipe tends to get too dense with a regular AP flour. The extra egg yolk enhances emulsification and will help to make a lighter cake.

My recipe for cooked buttercream frosting is here [uploader's note: it is on the Nebraska website.]

comments
Submitted by Livingwell on Tue, 2012-07-24 18:29.
Eeeeks - bilingual measurements! Can you please translate them for me??? I am hopeless at metric!

Submitted by auzzi on Sun, 2012-08-05 01:43.
Velveteen Cake - I use 20g more butter, no yolk, no dye, plain flour, 25g more cocoa, 1 tablespoon vinegar, buttermilk, 2x 20cm tins and a slightly higher temperature.

Submitted by KitchenBarbaria... on Wed, 2012-08-08 06:36.
Auzzi, I don't use butter at all (I use veg shortening instead), recommend against the dye, if not using the dye would also omit the extra yolk, and if using more cocoa would suggest also a slight increase in moisture to compensate.
Your recipe sounds different enough it might behoove you to post it separately. I'm actually not sure what a 2x20cm tin is - but since it's in metric I'm guessing you're in Europe? In which case the flour there is totally different.

Submitted by thelittlebakeryshop on Thu, 2012-08-09 15:27.
Is there any concern using butter in place of the shortening? I'm an all butter bakery. Maybe I will give this a try and post my results.

Submitted by KitchenBarbaria... on Fri, 2012-08-10 21:06.
Yes, butter is much harder to emulsify and will tend to make the cake denser and heavier. If using butter I would definitely stick with cake flour, and consider adding lecithin or other emulsifiers in addition to the extra egg yolk. Butter is also about 18% moisture so you would need to take that into account as well.