Red Velvet Cake

Red Velvet Cake

from cooking.nytimes.com
Cakes, dessert
657 kcal / serving

This is a cake to stop traffic. The layers are an improbable red that can vary from a fluorescent pink to a dark ruddy mahogany. The color, often enhanced by a full bottle of food coloring, becomes even more eye-catching set against clouds of snowy cream cheese-mascarpone frosting or ermine (also known as boiled-milk) frosting, like a slash of glossy lipstick framed by platinum blond curls. Even the name has a vampy allure: red velvet. These days this Southern favorite is found in just about every bakery, but perhaps for a special occasion (like the very red and white Valentine’s Day) you could try your hand at baking it.

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoonunsalted butter
  • 3 ½ cupscake flour
  • ½ cupunsweetened cocoa (not dutch process)
  • 1 ½ teaspoonskosher salt (such as diamond crystal)
  • 2 cupscanola oil
  • 2 ¼ cupsgranulated sugar
  • 3 largeeggs
  • 6 tablespoonsred food coloring
  • 1 ½ teaspoonsvanilla extract
  • 1 ¼ cupbuttermilk
  • 2 teaspoonsbaking soda
  • 2 ½ teaspoonswhite vinegar
  • cream cheese-mascarpone frosting; or ermine, or boiled-milk, frosting

Directions

  1. 1

    Heat oven to 350 degrees. Place teaspoon of butter in each of 3 round 9-inch layer cake pans and place pans in oven for a few minutes until butter melts. Remove pans from oven, brush interior bottom and sides of each with butter and line bottoms with parchment.

  2. 2

    Whisk cake flour, cocoa and salt in a bowl.

  3. 3

    Place oil and sugar in bowl of an electric mixer and beat at medium speed until well-blended. Beat in eggs one at a time. With machine on low, very slowly add red food coloring. (Take care: It may splash.) Add vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk in two batches. Scrape down bowl and beat just long enough to combine.

  4. 4

    Place baking soda in a small dish, stir in vinegar and add to batter with machine running. Beat for 10 seconds.

  5. 5

    Divide batter among pans, place in oven and bake until a cake tester comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes. Let cool in pans 20 minutes. Then remove from pans, flip layers over and peel off parchment. Cool completely before frosting.