*Brushes the dust off whisk and knocks on the door* Hello, is anybody there? It's me, Eleanor. I promise I'm still baking! Yes, I know it's been many, many months. Blame school. Seriously, any A Level student will agree with me when I say that life is now number two on my priority list. Between coursework, UCAS and general school stuff, I am so behind on this blog (well done, Sherlock). I actually made this cake all the way back on the 15th September, for my dear friend Mia, and I've finally gotten round to writing all of this up.
New year, back in time to historical recipes now. Not a massive jump this time, only back to 1960 for my favourite cake ever, the Red Velvet Cake.
Background
Although this cake is rumoured to go as far back as the 1920s, the first recipe for Red Velvet Cake didn't appear until 1960 (however, it's predecessors, Red Devil Cake and Chocolate Beet Cake, do date back further). The cake apparently first appeared in 1920 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, but this has never been verified. It is possible that the hotel served an earlier version of the cake. For example. Velvet Cakes had been popular since the mid-late 19th century. Two recipes appeared within a fortnight of each other: the first, by Mrs Cagle, was featured in the Denton Record-Chronicle on the 16th June 1960; the second, by Bette Thompson, in Amarillo Globe-Times on the 27th June of the same year. From then on, Red Velvet Cake became a tea-time staple, especially in America. It reached its all-time high fame in 1989 when the cake was featured in the film Steel Magnolias. It's my favourite type of cake, it's the wonderful Mia's favourite type of cake. How could I possibly resist? You can read more about the history of Red Velvet Cake here, here, and here.
Let the cake begin!
In an attempt to be as authentic as possible, I used Mrs Cagle's original recipe, which you can find here. If that's not your cup of tea, there are equally fantastic recipes here and here.
The first thing to do was to make up that gorgeous red chocolate that gives Red Velvet its name. I used regular cocoa powder and ordinary food colouring. However, the better quality your food colouring, the brighter and redder your end result will be. Just be careful not to put in any more than necessary, as modern food colouring can have a really bitter taste to it.
After creaming the butter and sugar together, and mixing in the eggs, it was time to add the red chocolate mixture and whisk everything.
Now it's time for the flour to go in.
The flour will take away the red colour from the mixture, so add some more food colouring if you think it's necessary (I didn't but it doesn't matter). Add the milk and vanilla before giving in a final whisk. Then it's ready to go into the tins.
There's one cake, just about to go into the oven...
...And there's the other one!
Out they come!
Finally, I sandwiched them together with some buttercream. You can completely frost the cake- top, sides and middle- but I decided just to stick to a plain sandwich because I'm boring like that, and my mum thoroughly dislikes too much buttercream (and we were running low on butter).
Ta-dah! There we are, a lovely Red Velvet Cake, perfectly authentic. Whilst I never actually tried any myself, I have on good authority that it was quite tasty. Red Velvet Cake is notoriously difficult to make but, compared to other recipes, this one wasn't half bad. 9/10
What a way to kick the year off! I hope that you enjoyed this post. I'm really going to try to keep Historicakes updated. I really enjoy baking (again, well done, Sherlock) and sharing my exploits with you. If you decide to give this, or any other Red Velvet recipe a go, let me know how it turns out! Maybe we can have a skirmish to decide what the ultimate Red Velvet Cake recipe is. I really appreciate any comments, suggestions, critiques, questions and suggestions for future recipes. We go back to history-inspired recipes now. Let's see if I finally get round to writing up the cake for that "When in Rome" hint I gave you all those months ago...
Happy New Year to you all!
Eleanor
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