The Birthday Boy Wanted Red Velvet

Since Rod and Patrick are visiting, there has been a lot of eating out going on and not a lot of home cooking or recipe testing or school going since we had today off -- and don't even ask if I took pictures, I'm still too full to pick up a camera! However last week I was operating my camera and since it was Collin Murray's birthday and he requested red velvet, I made him cupcakes. Red velvet cake appears in all my Mama's Texas home-cookin' cookbooks and as I'm sure most of you know, it appears on the shelves of most every bakery but what exactly is it?




Red velvet cake is red primarily because it contains an obscene amount of red food coloring. Some variations contain beet juice to create the color but most often, when you see red, it's food coloring. Another thing about red velvet is the cocoa powder in it; without cocoa powder and the food coloring, red velvet would just be white cake, and really, there is so little cocoa powder in cake that you can't taste it anyway which is why so many people argue that you don't need the cocoa anyway. People also argue about whether or not the cupcakes need to contain white vinegar and buttermilk (which I can tell you would be included because they are tenderizing agents but that's another story). Collin Murray doesn't argue about these things though and he doesn't care where the cake originated, be it in the South or at the Waldorf Astoria in the 1920's, he just knows he likes it and that it was what he wanted on his birthday.


If you want to know a little more about the cake and all her peculiarities, here is a great article from The New York Times.