From the first slice, as bright white frosting gives way to a blood-red crumb, red velvet cake is full of surprises. The rich cream cheese frosting, not-quite-chocolate flavor and especially moist sponge have made the dessert a popular staple in American cooking for at least a century.
Red velvet cake is a red colored layer cake with cream cheese or ermine icing. The origin of the cake is unknown, although it is popular in the Southern United States and has been served as a dessert at New York City's Waldorf-Astoria hotel since the 1920s. Both the hotel and Eaton's in Canada claim to have developed the recipe. Ingredients of the cake include baking powder, butter, buttermilk or vinegar, cocoa powder, eggs, flour, salt, vanilla extract, and in most modern recipes, red food coloring.
But between bites, we’ve all asked ourselves what is red velvet cake exactly? Red velvet cake is a vibrantly colored cake that’s typically topped with cream cheese frosting. And you’re certainly wondering what flavor is red velvet cake? This cake is flavored with a small amount of cocoa powder and vanilla extract. Over the years, variations of this dessert spread across the States.
Like many recipes, the Red Velvet cake’s true origins aren’t completely known. While there is no one clear answer, we do know that sometime between the 1920s and the 1950s, Red Velvet cake became very popular. Red Velvet cakes have been made since the 1800s. Recipes called for the use of cocoa to soften flour and make finer texture cakes. This smoother texture gave the cakes the name, “Velvet cakes.”
A slice of red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting.
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A Mahogany cake was also popular during this time which incorporated cocoa and coffee. . .think Devil’s Food cake. By the early 1900s, recipes surfaced for cocoa velvet cakes, red cocoa cakes, and other variations. One of the most prominent mentions of Red Velvet cake came in 1943 in Irma S. Rombauer’s The Joy of Cooking. . .yes, the same the book that inspired Julia Child’s career.
Additionally, in the 19th century, the first recipes for chocolate cakes appeared, with some including buttermilk, which, when combined with raw cocoa powder, would turn the batter and resulting cake a naturally occurring burgundy hue.
The Role of Ingredients
When you look at a recipe for red velvet cake, you’ll notice that it does include cocoa powder. For example, our top-rated red velvet cake contains 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder. When this cake first came onto the food scene in the early 20th century, red velvet cake wasn’t truly red. Rather, this cocoa-infused cake had a slightly brick-colored tone.
In American Cookery, by famed chef and food writer James Beard and published in 1972, Beard notes that the reaction between the buttermilk and vinegar-both common ingredients in red velvet recipes-can enhance the reddish color of cocoa powder.
When sugar and butter were rationed during World War II, some bakers began adding beets or beet juice to their cakes. This was done for a variety of reasons. The red from the beet juice made the cakes more appealing, and the beets also acted as filler and kept the cakes moist. The Adams Extract company attributes itself to making the “original” Red Velvet cake in the 1920s. Currently you can buy the mix from the company in its vintage packaging. The present day Red Velvet cake relies more on red food coloring than it does on beets.
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Another reason why food coloring is used to give the cake its signature color is because of the way cocoa is now processed in the United States. Most cocoa available in the groceries stores is known as Dutch process cocoa. The thing is, natural cocoa is fairly acidic. When it is processed, the acid is reduced while creating a rich brown color. It is the acid in the natural cocoa that reacts to the buttermilk creating a reddish hue.
Artificial Coloring and Regulations
Despite this, artificially colored food had been around for centuries. Colors were used to give foods and candies bright, attractive appearances but also to trick buyers. Added color was used by bakers in 1300s France to simulate the color of eggs. Today we still see things like this happen. Our sugar is bleached to look more white, apples are coated in colored wax to appear more appealing, candies are colored to be brighter and more eye-catching. (Palette of Our Palates: A Brief History of Food Coloring and Its Regulation)
These colors were not always safe. Ingredients like lead, to give a white color, and vermilion (which contained mercury), to give a bright red color, were both incredibly toxic. In 1820 Friedrich Accum wrote an exposé detailing the dangerous color altering practices of bakers and food manufactures. While his exposé was incredibly damning, not much came of it. Various attempts over the years and across countries were made to limit and regulate food coloring, but they went largely unheeded. The first breakthrough for the United States was the Wiley Act of 1906. This allowed color manufacturing for the first time to be sold to civilians. But even with this law, colors were misbranded and not always safe to use.
The Wiley Act of 1906, a breakthrough in food safety regulation.
This led to tumultuous food coloring in the US until 1938 when the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act went into effect, enforcing the manufacturing of safe food colorings, which were then marketed successfully to consumers. Responsibility for regulating and enforcing the safety of color additives was transferred to the newly minted FDA. At that time, 15 synthetic colors were approved for use in foods, six of which are still used today.
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Adams Extract and the Marketing of Red Velvet Cake
But back to World War II and that brilliant red color. Adams Extract, a company that historically made food flavor extracts, had begun production of artificial food colors for home use, thanks to the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Faced with new production abilities but limited consumer resources, Adams Extract had to find a way to market their products to the American public.
Former employees of Adams Extract say that while trying to come up with a new marketing idea, the owner of the company made a trip to, you guessed it, the Waldorf Astoria. During this trip, he sampled a slice of their red velvet cake, and in true corporate fashion, decided to steal the idea and capitalize on it. (New York Times).
Adams Extract began producing recipe kits for a red velvet cake. These kits included a bottle of their artificial vanilla flavor and a bottle of their red food dye.
The Waldorf Astoria and Eaton's Department Store Claims
The Waldorf Astoria claims to be the original creator of the red velvet cake as we know it. Their own cookbook rather arrogantly states, “Many people think that Red Velvet Cake is a Southern invention and, although it has gained popularity there, it actually started out as a signature dessert at the Waldorf Astoria in the 1920s.” (Waldorf Astoria cookbook) This, as many historians have shown, is a bald-faced lie with absolutely no basis in fact. Not only do we know that red velvet cake existed outside of the Waldorf Astoria, but their own archivist also did not find a record of a red velvet cake at the Astoria until the 1930s. (New York Times)
While the Astoria was not the real creator of the cake, it did an excellent job of capitalizing on the popular dessert. “Indeed, it's credited with the creation of the cake, but as the research shows, they only capitalized on a cake that was already somewhat known throughout the country.” (Southern Living) Rumors began to swirl that a customer, so impressed by the novel red velvet cake, asked for the recipe. The chef obliged, but when the patron received their bill, they had an exorbitant charge for the cake recipe. The patron was said to have been outraged, and when denied a refund decided to retaliate by spreading the recipe as far as possible. Historians and the Waldorf Astoria can agree on one thing: there is no record of such an event taking place. But the rumor on boosted the cake’s reputation and status, with the new name of "the $100 cake." The Astoria was not wanting for business.
Eaton's department store in Canada was also credited with the invention of the cake for many years. Employees and patrons of the store believed that the cake had been created by store matriarch, Lady Eaton herself. This, too, has been proven false, but the legend lived on. (This is similar to the urban myth from the 1990s about a $250 Neiman Marcus/Marshall Field/Mrs. Fields’ Original Cookies chocolate chip cookie recipe.)
Cream Cheese Frosting
The late 1940s saw the introduction of cream cheese frosting. Philadelphia Cream Cheese traces their first record of cream cheese frosting to a corporate cookbook that appeared in the late 1940s. Until that point, an ermine frosting was typically paired with red velvet cake. Cream Cheese frosting, however, was much easier to make. A simple whipping of cream cheese and powdered sugar produced a rich, tangy-sweet cover for the cakes, and it took all of 5 minutes to make. as opposed to a 15 or more minute effort to make ermine frosting, involving cooking and cooling of a pudding base, whipping additional ingredients, then combining the two without producing lumps. (New York Times)
After a Red Velvet cake showed up in the 1989 Southern-based movie Steel Magnolias as an armadillo-shaped groom’s cake with the unmistakable red interior, the Red Velvet cake suddenly garnered wider interest. Also at that time, cream cheese frosting increasingly supplanted the original roux frosting. Within a few years, the Red Velvet cake emerged as one of America’s favorites and became the thing to order.
African American Influence and Juneteenth
To add to its surprises, it also has long and proud connection to Juneteenth, the holiday that commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers marched into Texas and told the 250,000 people who were enslaved there that they were finally free, more than two years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
But the cake’s symbolism goes back even further. “In West African cultures, red symbolizes spiritual power, transformation and strength,” Iowa Juneteenth Director Dwana Bradley said. “It also represents the blood of enslaved people who never gained their freedom.”
The annual Juneteenth holiday celebrates the emancipation of African American slaves. Red food has been the traditional food eaten for this day since it was first observed in 1886. Culinary historian Adrian Miller explains that red drinks and Juneteenth have their links to two West African Foods, the kola nut, and hibiscus. Afroculinaria also notes that to the Yoruba and Kongo cultures of West Africa, the color red symbolizes spiritual power and transformation. “The practice of eating red foods-red cake, barbecue, punch, and fruit- may owe its existence to the enslaved Yoruba and Kongo brought to Texas in the 19th century. For both of these cultures, the color red is the embodiment of spiritual power and transformation. Enslavement narratives from Texas recall an African ancestor being lured using red flannel cloth, and many of the charms and power objects used to manipulate invisible forces required a red handkerchief.” (Afroculinaria)
In 1948 Freda DeKnight published A Date with Dish: Classic African American Recipes. The book included a recipe for a red devil's food cake, which included cocoa powder and red food dye. This showed that dyed red cake was a part of African American home cooking culture within a decade of home food dye becoming readily available to the public.
A Juneteenth celebration featuring red foods, including red velvet cake.
Here in Des Moines, guests can sample all of these Juneteenth foods and more at one of the many events Bradley and Iowa Juneteenth are hosting this month.
Decline and Resurgence
Red velvet’s claim to fame did not last indefinitely, however. As the 1960s naturalist movement began, the artificial red became less alluring and red velvet cake fell out of favor with the American public. The cake lost popularity after Red Dye #2 was linked to cancer in the 1970s.
The newfound interest led to New York-based Magnolia Bakery to, in true red velvet form, capitalize on the cake. They started serving their own red velvet cupcake, using beets to give the cupcake its ultra red color. By the 2000s, red velvet cake was back on the menu for upscale bakeries and events. But once a corporate gimmick, always a corporate gimmick. Red Velvet products began surfacing left and right. In 2009 red velvet flavored foods were 1.5 percent of all menu times. By 2013 it was 4.1 percent. And there are some pretty gross products out there.
Variations and Alternatives
Don’t want to use red food coloring in your red velvet cake? You can try a few other methods to create a vibrant dessert. First, you can try naturally derived food colorings. You can also use beet powder to add color. This veggie-based powder is mellow in flavor so it shouldn’t impact the taste of the cake much.
Chef Pamela Moxley's beetroot variation has beetroot, lemon juice, and goat cheese as additional components. According to the variation's recipe, beetroots are chopped to the size of sliced onions and added to the batter, while lemon juice is used to tint the batter red; goat cheese is combined with the cream cheese icing.[12] Other cake variations include red velvet bundt cake, doberge cake, ice cream cake and cheesecake.[13] Non-cake alternatives of red velvet cake include red velvet cookies, brownies, cinnamon rolls, lattes, teas, waffles, Pop-Tarts, and sundaes.
Red Velvet cake IS WHAT!!!
Recipe
Try the below recipe for a batch of delicious Red Velvet Cupcakes - great for sharing:
Ingredients:
- 120g butter
- 300g caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 250ml buttermilk
- 2 tablespoons red food colouring
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
- 1 tablespoon vinegar
- 250g plain flour
- 5 tablespoons best quality cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
Method:
- Preheat oven to 180 C / Gas mark 4. Grease two 12 cup muffin tins or line with 20 paper cases.
- in a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Mix in the eggs, buttermilk, red food colouring and vanilla. Stir in the bicarb and vinegar. Combine the flour, cocoa powder and salt; stir into the mixture just until blended. spoon the mixture into the prepared tin, dividing evenly.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 20 to 25 mins. Cool in the tin and set over a wire rack.
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