Sweet, Seductive & Oh-So-Scarlet: Fall in Love with Red Velvet Cake

No Comments | Written on January 30, 2012 at 11:00 am, by The Editors

Red Velvet Cake

Deep red cake contrasts beautifully with layers of white buttercream frosting in this irresistible dessert.

Chocolate and Vanilla Red Velvet Cake

The only thing that could make traditional red velvet cake even more delicious is a frosting of rich chocolate ganache.

Red Velvet Cake Balls

These bite-size treats are a perfect addition to your next party.

Aunt Jeans Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

A dollop of cream-cheese frosting gives these sweet cupcakes a deliciously smooth finish.

Red Velvet Cheesecake

Creamy cheesecake is even better with the rich cocoa flavor of red velvet cake.

Red Velvet Torte with White Truffle Frosting

Prepackaged cake mix makes this tasty torte quick and easy to prepare.

Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Believe it or not, this lighter version of the classic cake is less than 300 calories!

How is it that a single cake can seem at once old-fashioned but yet still strangely seductive, possessed of a kind of old-time glamor like those black-and-white pinups of silver-screen Hollywood queens? The red may get all the attention in red velvet cake — that arresting, vampish scarlet, which might seem a bit too brash were it not traditionally tempered by the angelic white, innocent fluff of piles of cream cheese frosting. But it’s the quality stuff of the cake itself (that devilish hint of cocoa) that really gives it a kind of sexy confidence. It’s earned its red and wears it well, sort of like the difference between red lipstick on Catherine Deneuve and whoever is the pop starlet of the month.

Long believed to hail from the South, it’s not entirely clear where red velvet cake originated. One myth has it appearing at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria in the 1920s, and though we like the thought of bejeweled flappers sipping Champagne and brushing scarlet crumbs from their sequined laps, alas, that myth has been debunked. Whatever the case, red velvet cake was probably not always quite so red: it’s believed that in traditional recipes, a more modest brownish-red hue resulted from a chemical reaction between the acidic buttermilk and the cocoa powder. Somewhere along the line, someone decided to amp up the effect with food coloring, and red velvet, like Hollywood, went Technicolor.