Red Velvet, If You Please

I was one of those anti-red-velvet people.  I was always skeptical of eating what I thought was essentially a chocolate cake with an alarmingly large amount of red dye no. 5.  I mean, if someone gave me a red velvet cupcake, I would eat it, but never with the reckless abandon of, say, a vanilla coconut cake or a glorious slice of boysenberry pie.  I honestly felt that "red velvet" was just an overly sexy name for a rather vulgar dessert that disguised its mediocrity with a fancy moniker and a potentially toxic amount of food coloring...kind of like a hooker with too much lipstick whose name was Chantal or Maxine.  Intriguing?  Yes.  Delicious? Dubious!  

Last week, I was reading one of my favorite magazines, Cook's Illustrated, and they had a recipe for the perfect red velvet cake.  Hmmmm...if it's good enough for Cook's Illustrated, there must be something revelatory about it that I haven't experienced.  What I love about this magazine is that they don't just print recipes, they deconstruct them and rebuild them to make them foolproof.  They may add some crazy steps like baking apple crisp topping before putting it on the apples so that it is actually crispy instead of soggy or adding vodka to pie crust, which gives pies a tender crust but doesn't toughen it like water can.  If science merged with your Grandma, it would be Cook's Illustrated magazine.  For each recipe, the tester describes the trial and error, the failed ingredient combinations and then finally the moment of triumph where the perfect recipe reveals itself.  It's like reading a really short, suspenseful mystery novel where the main characters are delicious foodstuffs!  Like Keri Fisher, who was the recipe tester for this cake, my first glimpse of red velvet cake was in the movie, Steel Magnolias - remember the armadillo cake?  Not only was it shaped like an unappetizing animal, it was bright crimson inside. Weird!  In the red velvet cakes of yore, the color was actually a by-product of a chemical reaction between vinegar and/or buttermilk and cocoa powder.  Before red food coloring, sugar beet juice was a common ingredient to intensify the color.  So not only might there be a delicious recipe here somewhere, this dessert actually has a history.  I was taken with the idea of making my own red velvet extravaganza.  I've never had a real homemade red velvet cake and neither has anyone I have asked.  I wanted to see if it differed from the bakery red velvet cakes I've had and it seemed like a festive dessert for a holiday dinner party I was having.

I will say upfront that the cake calls for an entire bottle of red food coloring!  And contrary to my belief that red velvet cake is just chocolate cake with red coloring, there are only 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder.  There is also a whole tablespoon of vinegar in this recipe, which I learned makes the cake not only more tender, but brighter in color as well.

Mixing all my ingredients, I felt like a mad scientist.  I also felt pretty naughty using a whole bottle of food coloring.   And this cake wasn't just red, it was explosively red.  It was bloody.  I giggled, I danced around the kitchen with my spatula, which now looked like a murder weapon.  It was like a scene from CSI.  I wonder if William Peterson likes cake.

And then there was the frosting....this was the most fluffy, dreamy, cream cheesy frosting ever!  Normally when I make cream cheese frosting, I mix a stick of butter, a box of confectioners sugar, a teaspoon of vanilla and one package of cream cheese in a bowl and have something pretty tasty.  This recipe called for 2 packages of cream cheese and 2 sticks of butter!  I thought it might be super dense and way too rich, but it was so light and very yummy.  The bright white color was a lovely compliment to the dark cake, too.  So far, this was a pretty cool experiment.

I served the cake to our friends Kelly and Freddy after a dinner of lobster mac n' cheese, lovingly made by Aaron, and a salad of watercress, roasted beets, tangerines and pistachios.  My cake was celebrated, ohhhed and ahhhed over and devoured.  It was luxurious and tasted tangy and vaguely chocolately but there was a subtleness to it.  It had a taste that was all its own.  This cake lived up to it's elegant name.  OK Red Velvet Cake, you win.  I am under your spell.  You have wooed me with your brazen color and tenderness.  You have charisma and charm.  You are deceptively complex and deep.  You are also playful and a bit campy.  If you were a woman, you might wear false eyelashes, but you wouldn't be a hooker. I take that back.

Forget the vanilla coconut cake, forget the boysenberry pie.  From now on, it's red velvet.  If you please.

RED VELVET CAKE (from Cook's Illustrated Magazine)

Note:  This recipe must be prepared with natural cocoa powder.  Dutch-processed cocoa will not rise or yield the proper color.

CAKE

2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

Pinch table salt

1 Cup buttermilk

1 TBSP white vinegar

1 TSP vanilla 

2 large eggs

2 TBSP natural cocoa powder

2 TBSP (one 1-ounce bottle) red food coloring

12 TBSP (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 Cups granulated sugar

FROSTING

16 TBSP (2 sticks)

4 Cups (16 oz) confectioners' sugar

16 oz cream cheese, cut into 8 pieces, softened

1 1/2 TSP vanilla 

Pinch table salt

1.  For the CAKE:  Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and flour two 9-inch cake pans.  Whisk flour, baking soda and salt in medium bowl.  Whisk buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla and eggs in large measuring cup.  Mix cocoa with food coloring in small bowl until smooth paste forms. 

2.  With stand mixer on medium-high, beat butter and sugar together until fluffy, about 2 minutes, scraping down bowl as necessary.  Add one third of flour mixture and beat on medium-low speed until just incorporated, about 30 seconds.  Scrape down bowl as necessary and repeat with half of remaining flour mixture, remaining buttermilk mixture, and finally remaining flour mixture.  Scrape down bowl, add cocoa mixture, and beat on medium speed until completely incorporated, about 30 seconds.  Using rubber spatula, give batter final stir.  Scrape into prepared pans and bake until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 25 minutes.  Cool cakes in pans 10 minutes, then turn out onto wire rack to cool completely, at least 30 minutes.  

3.  For the FROSTING:  with stand mixer, beat butter and sugar on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 2 minutes.  Add cream cheese, 1 piece at a time, and beat until incorporated, about 30 seconds.  Beat in vanilla and salt.  Refrigerate until ready to use.