Red Velvet

[Ellyn]

I went over some recipes and was disappointed to see that red velvet cake...is essentially chocolate cake. Cocoa, more like, which I guess is chocolate but without the sugar and oil. It's only red because of food coloring, which sort of confused me. Why disguise the chocolate?

Further investigation--and by investigation, I mean Wikipedia--turned up the the red of velvet actually came from red beets. This wasn't originally a beet-and-cocoa cake, however. Red beets were the resort of bakers during wartime, when food was rationed, and therefore the cakes couldn't look as good, cakes didn't have the rich colors they had without the red beet additive. Later, bakers did away with the red beet entirely and just colored the food.

Another thing that adds to the redness of red velvet is the way that the acidic buttermilk in the recipes can react with cocoa, bringing out the red coloring. Extra baking soda not only makes these cakes even fluffier, but also brings out reds and deeper browns from the cocoa. (This won't work with Dutch or Dutch-style processed cocoa. Broma-processed cocoa is what this works on, but now I can't think of any brand of cocoa powder that isn't evidently Dutch-processed, and as Dutch-processed cocoa is quite a vivid hue, maybe popular food manufacturing just saves us all the trouble eh?)

The chocolatey flavor can be offset with a bit of cream cheese. Or pannacotta, if you want to be fancy.



I researched all this because I suddenly remembered that Red Velvet Pancakes had become a thing, and I'd just put it at the back of my mind. Okay, well, Red Velvet pikelets... but that's another topic. No, no this one.

Nigella Lawson has one such recipe, but I'm looking to make my own, maybe with grated sugar beets as a prominent source of flavor and body as well as coloring, and apple cider vinegar (1/4 cup of that with milk, it's a substitute for buttermilk right?)

 

[skywatcher]

This is pretty interesting, though I'm sorta disappointed (for a bit) to see that it's actually just a chocolate cake, haha. From my standpoint, this is really enlightening - not only does this shed light to the question as to "why on Earth are red velvets a hit," but in the "how they're really made." It's interesting how the red beet was used by bakers in the war time season, too (this gave me a rather new perspective on wartime cooking), but then again, everyone really seemed to make way to coloring nowadays.

Now I want to try making one of my own, hahaha

 

[Ellyn]

The chocolatey flavor can be offset with a bit of cream cheese. Or pannacotta, if you want to be fancy.

Whoops, I meant ricotta, as in the whey cheese. I cannot speak Italian, I can only eat it.

This is pretty interesting, though I'm sorta disappointed (for a bit) to see that it's actually just a chocolate cake, haha. From my standpoint, this is really enlightening - not only does this shed light to the question as to "why on Earth are red velvets a hit," but in the "how they're really made." It's interesting how the red beet was used by bakers in the war time season, too (this gave me a rather new perspective on wartime cooking), but then again, everyone really seemed to make way to coloring nowadays. Now I want to try making one of my own, hahaha

Red Velvet was supposed to be a sort of red version of devil's food cake or angel's food cake, so, was supposed to be very flavorful, soft, and fluffy... completely opposite of a pound cake. I think it's just a normal cake, though I like it when white cheeses are combined with sweet stuff. I've never bitten into a red velvet cake and gone, "oh wow this is so soft and fluffy I can't resist another bite", it's mostly the cream cheese frosting that's the draw for me.

Food history can bring a new appreciation to some things, I also find it so interesting! Some of my favorite foods it turns out were recipes made by people who were sort of forced into the lower ranks of the classes in society, and would have to cook with parts of an animal that the higher class would refuse to eat. So, they were originally gross scraps unfit for human consumption, but over generations they became proper meals of their own! It can work the other way, too, like lobster is considered a luxury food in some places, but originally people who lived on the shores or were seafarers were like, "Ugh, we're out of food stock and starving...no fish to catch...so I guess we're going to have to eat those creepy insect-like fish now..." so they didn't take lobster as a luxury food at all!