This takes a few hours, but less time than waiting overnight.ĭoing this gives your red velvet cake the most moist and perfect crumb! You don’t need to add simple syrup or any other cake “hack” to add moisture to this recipe. If you’re in a rush, put them in the refrigerator until they’re chilled. You can place them wrapped in the cooled cake pans and let them sit overnight at room temperature. To keep the cake layers ultra-moist, wrap them in plastic after the resting period and let them cool that way. If you don’t have a food scale, use a large scoop to divide the batter between the pans. A little is totally fine though, especially paired with chocolate.Ī food scale is the best way to divide your batter evenly between cake pans. Don’t add too much so the cake doesn’t have a beet flavor. It will not get as vibrant as the photos with natural colors. If you’d prefer a natural alternative, a little beet juice will give the cake a subtle red hue. You need MUCH less of the gel to get good color in the cake. You will need to add red food coloring to dye the cake, and I’d recommend using a gel color instead of a liquid dye. That helps prevent overmixing while still incorporating all the ingredients evenly. Then, add your flour mixture in 3 rounds. If you add all the eggs at once, you’ll have to mix a lot, which means you can knock all the air out of your butter mixture. Add them one at a time and scrape the bowl after each addition to make sure they’re well incorporated. King Arthur Baking has a whole article about the science behind it here if you want to geek out a little.Īfter you’ve got your butter and sugar combined, you’ll add your eggs. If you don’t cream enough, you won’t have enough air incorporated into the batter so it won’t rise much. Too much and your butter will get too warm to provide adequate structure to your cake. When you are creaming the butter and sugar, look for the mixture to turn a pale yellow and look fluffy. I’ve done both and the results are equally delectable. You can mix this cake by hand using a hand mixer, or a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. With this cake, the time to incorporate air into the batter is during the butter and sugar creaming process! You don’t want to beat the batter too much once you’ve added the flour because that will activate the gluten and make your cake dense. Then we add the remaining dry and liquid ingredients, starting and ending with dry ingredients, until we have a smooth batter. That means we beat the butter and sugars together to incorporate air into the batter and create the base. This cake is made using the classic creaming method. In my opinion, it’s rare to find a truly delicious recipe outside of the South. To get that red, we have to add dye.ĭespite it’s northern roots, I’ve always known it to be a distinctly Southern cake. It’s not as bright as red velvet cakes now. The “red” part of the cake is actually a result of a chemical reaction between the vinegar in the batter and the cocoa powder. The Waldorf Astoria hotel created the recipe and called it the Waldorf Astoria cake sometimes around the Depression Era. While the red velvet cake is largely considered a Southern treat, it appears its roots are in New York City! It makes a lot of cupcakes though, so I’ve played with it a bit and have a lovely red velvet cupcake recipe for you here.

Well, I used to use it for both cakes and cupcakes.

This easy red velvet cake recipe is all of that! I’ve used it for years as both a layer cake and cupcake recipe with incredible results each and every bake. Of course, it has an incredibly moist, but not super dense, crumb. The mark of a really good red velvet cake is a slight tang from vinegar and buttermilk with just the right hint of chocolate. That, my darlings, is *not* red velvet cake contrary to what I have heard/seen in my life outside the South. It’s the best red velvet cake I’ve tried! This cake is most definitely *not* chocolate cake with red food coloring. This is my perfect red velvet cake recipe.

Homemade red velvet cake