Contents
A mildly chocolate buttermilk cake, dyed red, layered with cream cheese frosting. The colour began as an accident of chemistry — natural cocoa at low pH turns reddish-brown — and became a deliberate one when Adams Extract of Texas sold red dye alongside the recipe in the 1940s. The Waldorf-Astoria story is folklore.
It is worth being clear about what it tastes of: buttermilk and vanilla with a suggestion of cocoa. It is not a chocolate cake.
What makes it work
- Vinegar and buttermilk against baking soda. The acid–base reaction is the lift, and the low pH is what protects the red. This is the same chemistry as devils food cake, run the other way.
- Only 20 g of cocoa. More and the brown swamps the red and the flavour stops being velvet.
- Oil or butter, and it matters. Oil gives the moister, softer crumb most American bakeries use; butter gives flavour. This recipe splits the difference.
- Gel colour, not liquid. Liquid food colouring at the volume needed thins the batter. Beet powder works as a natural alternative and fades in the oven — see Beets.
- Cream cheese frosting must be cold-butter cold. Overbeaten or warm, it slumps. See Cream Cheese Frosting.
Ingredients
Three 20 cm layers. Serves 14.
- 340 g all-purpose flour
- 20 g cocoa powder — see Cocoa and cocoa mixes
- 8 g baking soda
- 5 g fine salt
- 115 g unsalted butter, softened
- 180 ml neutral oil
- 400 g granulated sugar
- 3 eggs
- 240 ml buttermilk — see buttermilk recipes
- 2 tsp vanilla — see Pure vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp red gel food colouring
- 1 tbsp white vinegar
Frosting:
- 450 g full-fat cream cheese, cold
- 225 g unsalted butter, softened
- 500 g powdered sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 3 g fine salt
Method
Heat the oven to 175 °C / 350 °F. Butter and line three 20 cm tins.
Whisk the flour, cocoa, soda and salt.
Beat the butter, oil and sugar three minutes, then the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla and colouring.
Alternate the dry mixture with the buttermilk in three additions. Stir the vinegar in last — it will fizz faintly — and get the batter into the tins promptly.
Bake 24–28 minutes, until a skewer shows moist crumbs. Cool completely.
For the frosting, beat the butter smooth, add the cold cream cheese and beat only until combined — 30 seconds. Add the sifted sugar, vanilla and salt and beat one minute more. Do not keep going; cream cheese loosens the longer it is worked.
Notes
- Level the layers and save the scraps. Blitzed with a spoonful of frosting and rolled, they are the standard red velvet cake pop.
- Keeps four days refrigerated, but serve at room temperature — cold cream cheese frosting is waxy.
- The unfrosted layers freeze for three months, wrapped tightly.
Elsewhere on the site
Method and theory: Cake recipes · cakes · Cream Cheese Frosting · Types of Frostings
Nearby: devils food cake · hummingbird cake · birthday layer cake