Red Velvet Cake

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Red velvet cake has an interesting history and evolution. It’s traditionally reddish chocolate cake, layered with ermine frosting. Modern recipes will add red food-colouring and top with a cream cheese frosting.

Key characteristics

Red velvet cake is ambiguous and has been appropriated to piggyback on its name. It’s easy to reduce it down to being chocolate cake that is dyed red. Or cake with cream cheese frosting.

Cake batter

Red velvet cake is a lightly chocolate cake, frosted with a light frosting. It uses about 1/4 of the cocoa powder compared to common chocolate cakes. And it’s a light, fluffy batter that does not contain actual chocolate, unlike a decadent devil’s food cake. With the reduction in cocoa, other non-chocolate flavours can come out to play. This allows flavour from vanilla or from the cream cheese frosting to play a larger role in the flavouring.

It also has tang from buttermilk. This can sometimes be found in other chocolate cake recipes but is a key feature of this cake.

Frosting

Traditionally, red velvet cake is topped with Ermine frosting. This is also called boiled milk frosting or flour frosting. In the American South, this frosting is preferred due to its stability in the hot and humid conditions. Ermine frosting is light and uses less butter flavouring. It takes well to additional flavouring, such as vanilla extract.

Modern day recipes use cream cheese frosting. This frosting is also quite stable in the heat. It emphasizes the tang from the buttermilk.

Red Colour

Modern red velvet cakes use food colouring

Many modern recipes use red food dye. And requires the use of the paste, to achieve that deep-tinted red. So that answers the question of how it looks that way.

The next question is, why do we even bother dying it? My hot take is that the deep red colour is not appetizing and looks kind of gross and unnatural. I’d feel the same if you substitute the dye with any other colour, such as blue. Maybe using a colour to enhance the dark brown chocolate colour or yellow egg yolk colour might be condoned.

Traditional red velvet cakes use cocoa

The red colour in red velvet cake is due presence of anthocyanin-rich natural cocoa powder. Anthocyanin is a pigment that is found in many foods:

  • fruits, including all sorts of berries, cherries, plums
  • black bean (skin)
  • purple or blue corn
  • grapes (and wine!)
  • red cabbage

Yes, one of the pigments that causes wine stains is the same thing that makes red velvet cake red! Chocolate cake is actually deep brown-reddish. Since red velvet cake uses much less cocoa, the red-tint is more prominent.

Anthocyanin

But cocoa alone is not enough to differentiate red velvet from chocolate cake. The presence of acids, from buttermilk and vinegar, lowers the pH. And anthocyanin is a pigment that changes colour according to pH:

  • if the solution is acidic, the pigment will be red or pink
  • if the solution is neutral, the pigment will be purple or blue
  • if the solution is alkaline, the pigment will be green or yellow

It just so happens that a prominent characteristic of red velvet cakes is the buttermilk and vinegar tang. The addition results in a cake that is red as a by-product, it was not the goal to produce a red batter.

Natural vs. Dutched cocoa

It should be noted that we’re discussing natural cocoa. The term natural is not a reference to non-GMO or other “from nature” qualifiers. It refers to the cocoa that is not Dutch processed. Dutch processing is when cocoa is treated with alkaline agent that results in pH neutral, darker, and smoother tasting cocoa. Dutch cocoa is not a better or worse cocoa product: it’s simply a different product.

Since Dutch cocoa is pH neutral, it doesn’t react with bases and this substitution can cause recipe failures. The baking soda in recipe will not react to leaven the batter. In North American recipes, cocoa will be natural if not specified. And the cocoa in stores will be natural if not specified and if the ingredient list doesn’t contain alkalizing ingredients.

Recipe comparisons

Comparing red velvet (Joy of Baking) to chocolate cake (Bon Appetit) to vanilla (Joy of Baking), we can see that the major differences:

  • Chocolate cake has higher wet to dry ratio, making it denser and moist
  • Chocolate cake uses oil, as butter flavour is muted by chocolate
  • Red velvet uses buttermilk instead of milk
  • Red velvet has addition of vinegar
  • Vanilla cake has more flour and less sugar

From this, I think we can surmise that red velvet cake is somewhere in between a vanilla cake and chocolate cake. It’s not quite as light and buttery as the vanilla cake. But it’s not as dense and rich as the chocolate cake. It’s somewhere in the middle, a hybrid.

Ermine Frosting

While red velvet cake is universally associated with cream cheese frosting, ermine frosting is traditional. Ermine frosting is a frosting made with a roux. It whips up light and not overly sweet. It takes well to flavourings, such as vanilla.