The Secret to a Real Red Velvet Cake Recipe

Red velvet cupcakes are easy to dress up for Christmas, but delicious no matter what the occasion.

Many of us have had red velvet cake: The kind you get at the store, the kind you eat at a party, the kind you make from a cake mix. But I know I'm not the only one who has wondered what makes it red, and what makes it different from any old cake recipe with tons of red dye poured in?

I did the footwork to find out. The answer? There are at least four ingredients you need to know about to find a great, authentic red velvet cake recipe. Beyond that, there's a bit you should know about the frosting, too. Read on...

A real red velvet cake recipe uses buttermilk, vinegar, and cocoa. Look for these ingredients to determine whether you've found an authentic red velvet cake recipe.

So, what's the secret to a real red velvet cake recipe? Buttermilk, vinegar, and at least 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder. Oh, and tons of red food dye (artificial or natural). If you found a red velvet cake recipe and it doesn't include these, then keep looking. The red velvet cake frosting matters, too: use either a cream cheese or a roux frosting, as described below.

I took a bite! The secret to a real red velvet cake recipe, other than buttermilk, vinegar, and cocoa, is a roux frosting.

According to legend (i.e. Wikipedia), the mixture of acidic buttermilk and vinegar with cocoa enhances a reddish pigment in cocoa called anthocyanin.  Many original and authentic red velvet cake recipes call for natural dye extracted from beets to enhance the red color, while modern recipes often call for an artificial food dye. There are plenty of options on the market for both natural and artificial red dyes, so take your pick.

Yum! You can see a cross-section of the red velvet cake frosting in this picture.

The frosting is important, too. If you're aiming for a really authentic "real red velvet cake", don't bother topping it with anything other than cream cheese frosting - unless you want to make a butter roux frosting, in which case you get extra credit points for historical accuracy. Roux frosting (also known as boiled milk frosting or ermine frosting) was originally the real red velvet cake frosting.

This example shows how you can decorate red velvet cupcakes for Christmas.

Here is another example of how to decorate red velvet cupcakes for Christmas

I experimented with a few Christmas decorations, since the dessert's red-and-white color combo lends itself to the seasonal colors.

Real red velvet cake makes a great holiday cake for christmas. A roux frosting is the traditional frosting for this cake.

Real Red Velvet Cake Recipe and Butter Roux Frosting (Ermine Frosting/ Boiled Milk Frosting)

If you want the recipe I used, the cupcakes are here, and the frosting (cream cheese) is here. These cupcakes turned out really well. For some of the red velvet cupcakes, I used a traditional red velvet cake frosting: roux frosting (also known as butter roux frosting, boiled milk frosting, or ermine frosting). The recipe for that is here.

Hope you found these red velvet cake tips useful! Now you know the secret to real red velvet cake recipe.

BakerGal!

Recipe for Gooey Cinnamon Buns

These gooey cinnamon buns make great breakfast rolls. 

What was my friend's response to these cinnamon rolls while we were making them? "Disturbing," was her opinion.  I would say they're disturbingly delicious: gooey, hazelnut-covered, buttery, cinnamon joy in a dish. Technically, they are hazelnut cinnamon rolls: It's a traditional recipe for gooey cinnamon buns with toasted hazelnuts added.

This cinnamon bun recipe worked wonderfully. It was easy and yielded better results than more elaborate cinnamon bun rolls I've made.

She was disturbed by something else, though: the yeast. She was thinking through the dough-making process: first you put micro-organisms in bowl with their favorite food, let them get a little party started, then bake them to death and eat them. Yum? Put that way, gooey cinnamon buns are just dead micro-organism cakes. Mmmmm.

Not for the faint (or clogged) of heart.  BUTTER alert!

I was getting a little grossed-out while we were dwelling on the topic.  Luckily, it didn't take long for the mouth-watering aroma of baking hazelnut cinnamon rolls to erase those thoughts.
If you want to make these, a 9x13 inch pan is essential because the buns bake in a bubbling ocean of butter and brown sugar. When they are done and slightly cooled, invert the pan onto a platter (another friend tackled that tricky procedure with finesse), and all that buttery brown sugar from the bottom of the pan becomes a gooey topping.

Gooey cinnamon buns from the corner of the pan are my favorite.

They turned out wonderfully. They were light and fluffy on the inside, and outshone more elaborate recipes I've tried that call for letting the dough rise overnight. I immediately snapped up a roll with a golden brown, flaky crust from the corner of the pan.

Recipe for Gooey Cinnamon Buns

Thank Allrecipes.com for this gem, found here.

Make a glaze to drizzle over the finished product (powdered sugar with just a little bit of maple syrup and milk). The recipe might be a little short on flour - I had to add about a 1/4 cup extra before my helpers and I could knead it - but that is probably because I wasn't careful enough when measuring the flour initially.

Variation: Hazelnut Cinnamon Rolls Recipe

Using the recipe above, I substituted the pecans for toasted hazelnuts.

BakerGal

Rainbow Cupcake Recipe

These rainbow cupcakes rock!

Somewhere, over the cupcake rainbow....is a recipe for making colorful cupcakes. And I will take you there. The popularity of rainbow baked goods seems to have gotten its start with rainbow cake. I can assure you, having made the seven-layer cake myself, that these are much easier to take on.

A double rainbow of rainbow cupcakes!! Wizard of Oz cupcakes . . .

But why make rainbow cupcakes? For a Wizard of Oz party?  A Pride celebration? Because you want to taste the rainbow? These would be great reasons to make the rainbow cupcake recipe below. But the truth is, rainbow cupcakes don't need a reason. Make them, enjoy them, and feel the satisfaction of sharing these fun cupcakes with some friends.

A Double "Rainbow Cupcake" Rainbow!

But, no! In fact, I wanted to make an edible double rainbow! If you're still asking "What does it mean?!", then you should watch the double rainbow video on YouTube, which features a hapless hiker freaking out when he sees a double rainbow.

Want to make the rainbow cupcake recipe yourself? 

How to Make Rainbow Cupcakes

Makes 10-12 large cupcakes

• Choose any white cake mix from the store.
• Prepare the batter according to the directions on the back of the box, except substitute 1/2 cup the liquid called for on the back of the box for sour cream so that the batter will be thick enough to support each color layer.
• Divide the white cake batter equally into 6 clear plastic cups and add food coloring to each. Use gel food coloring, which is more vibrant than liquid food coloring.
• Add cupcake liners to 10-12 cups of your cupcake pan. Spoon the first cup of colored batter equally among the lined cups. Repeat with the remaining cups. When I did this, about a spoonful from each cup went into each cupcake paper.
• Bake as directed, but watch closely, they may take longer (5-10 min) than the box suggests, because I'm directing you to add extra batter to each. The extra batter helps the cupcakes dome up into an attractive muffin shape. 

Best of luck with your own rainbow cupcake recipe!

"It's almost . . . a TRIPLE rainbow,"
BakerGal

Gingerbread Leaf Cookies: A Great Fall Dessert

Looking for fall cookie ideas? Grab your leaf cookie cutters and a gingerbread cookie recipe, and get started!

Cookie cutters have a stale reputation thanks to the humdrum sugar cookies they're often used to make at Christmas time. But behold the awesomeness of gingerbread leaves in autumnal shades! Oak leaves, maple leaves, ooh la la. All it takes are a gingerbread cookie recipe and some fun maple and oak leaf cookie cutters.

These fall cookies were festive and fun. Any gingerbread cookie recipe will do!

Not only were they chewy and delicious, but the variety of colors these cookies sported also lent a festive air to the table. Edible decorations! Thanks to a liberal application of decorative sugar crystals, they sparkled, too. My friends were oh-so-happy to "rake them up" for me.

You can vary the "shade" of your leaf cookies by dividing your batter into thirds and adding varying amounts of cocoa powder to each batch.

I used a standard gingerbread cookie recipe designed for cookie cutters (gingerbread men, in fact) as a starting point, and varied the ingredients and proportions slightly to yield a variety of fall shades. This resulted in an exciting range of colors in the finished leaf cookies

How to Make Leaf Cookies in Varying Shades of Brown

In total, I made three batches of cookies: I added 5 ounces of melted bittersweet chocolate to one batch of dough and 3 ounces to the second batch (though the difference in color between the two was hard to detect). In the third batch, I reduced the molasses from 1/2 cup to 1/4 cup, replaced brown sugar with white sugar, and added a little milk (a little less than 1/4 cup) to replace the moisture from the molasses that I removed.

These fall cookies were a delicious addition to the table.

It would have been easy to make an even lighter leaf cookie for a more distinct contrast across the leaves. Alas, I ran out of time.  A simple sugar cookie recipe with brown sugar substituted for white sugar and some fall spices tossed in (1/4 tsp ground cloves, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 1 tsp ground nutmeg, and 1 to 2 tsp ground ginger) would have been the perfect addition.  Consider it a reader assignment. :)

Happy fall baking!
BakerGal

Chocolate Raspberry Mousse Cake Recipe

On those first crisp fall days, when the last raspberries have just been picked, I like to curl up with a slice of chocolate cake. Specifically, I like to curl up with four layers of rich chocolate raspberry mousse cake. Drizzled with tangy raspberry syrup. Sandwiched between fresh raspberry mousse. Covered in chocolate ganache, and, finally, garnished with raspberries. Phew! What a delicious way to say goodbye to summer!

Don't worry, I didn't eat all of this cake myself (cue imagery from Roald Dahl's Matilda) - I  had the help of some lucky friends.

Remaining slice of chocolate raspberry mousse cake recipe.

So lucky, in fact, that they got first dibs ... and this was the last morsel I could whisk off for a photo shoot before the whole thing was gone! You can even see a few battle scars on the cake from this frightening maneuver. Sorry I didn't get a nicer slice to photograph; there are only so many limbs I will stick into a pack of feeding hyenas. Besides, I think you get the idea.

One note: To get four layers, I baked two cake rounds and split each in half, but when serving the cake, I struggled to slice through all four layers without causing the cake to shift. Instead, I'd suggest a single layer of mousse between two layers (depending on the cake-to-mousse ratio you want, either keep the original two cake rounds intact, or make a single cake round and cut it in half).

Chocolate Raspberry Mousse Cake Recipe

I've adjusted everything below for a two-layer cake with one layer of mousse. If you really want to try a four-layer version, just double the mousse recipe, and split the two cake layers in half.

Chocolate Cake

I don't have anything against box mixes. By all means, give yourself a break after going through the pain of making raspberry mousse (honestly, you'll have earned it). However, if you want to try a delicious from-scratch chocolate cake recipe, then you can kick it up a notch with one of my favorites, found on Epicurious.

Yeild: two 10-inch by 2 inch cake rounds. Let them cool, and then if the tops are crowned, level them with a bread knife before proceeding.

Chocolate Ganache for Raspberry Mousse Cake

Chocolate ganache is simple to make, and there are plenty of variations online. The one that Epicurious provides in the chocolate cake recipe above works just fine. Go for it!

Garnish for Chocolate Raspberry Mousse Cake

19 fresh raspberries (1 pint of raspberries should contain slightly more than this)

Raspberry Mousse Recipe (plenty enough for one layer, plus some extra)

This is labor intensive...mainly because you have to seed the raspberries if you don't want seeds in your mousse. As an alternative, you can try to substitute seedless raspberry jam, but you will end up losing the freshness and intense flavor of the real fruit.

12 oz package of frozen raspberries in light syrup (about 2 cups thawed), thaw, drain, and reserve 1/3 cup liquid for the mousse, and ~1 cup liquid for the raspberry syrup recipe
Any remaining fresh raspberries after setting aside the 19 you need for garnish
1/2 cup or more powdered sugar (depending on how sweet raspberries are to start with)
1 packet (~2.5 Tbsp) Knox unflavored gelatin
3 Tbsp seedless raspberry jam

A few cups of ice cubes
1 cup heavy whipping cream
Few drops red/pink food coloring

Purée the fresh and frozen raspberries with 1/6 cup of the the reserved raspberry liquid. Strain through a fine sieve, pressing firmly, to separate the pulp from the seeds as thoroughly as possible. Stir 1/2 cup powdered sugar into raspberry pulp and set aside, ideally in a metal bowl (important later, for heat transfer).

In an electric mixer, beat the whipping cream just until it holds soft peaks. Set aside.

Place the 3 Tbsp of seedless raspberry jam and remaining 1/6 cup of raspberry liquid (use water instead if you didn't get enough liquid from the thawed berries) in a small microwaveable dish. Heat in brief intervals, stirring, until jam is melted. Add gelatin and stir. Heat gently again, stirring until gelatin is melted. Whisk this into the raspberry pulp.

Place the bowl of raspberry pulp mixture in a larger bowl of ice and water, whisking until slightly thickened. Remove from ice water, and whisk in 1/4 of the whipped cream. Carefully fold in remaining the whipped cream until just combined and no streaks of the two mixtures are left.

Taste a small spoonful of mousse. If it is still too tart, carefully fold in more powdered sugar in small increments (1/4 cup or less) until it's sweet enough for you. At this point, you can also add food coloring to achieve the desired "raspberry color" if needed.

Allow to cool in refrigerator ~30-45 min, or until it begins to stabilize. This gives the gelatin time to set, so that your filling can withstand the weight of a cake layer without oozing out the sides of the cake.

Raspberry Syrup Recipe (to soak the cake layers with)

1 cup raspberry juice, divided into 1/2 cups (reserved from drained frozen raspberries)
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup seedless raspberry jam
optional: 3 Tbsp chocolate syrup

Add 1/2 cup sugar to 1/2 cup raspberry juice, and boil on stove top until sugar is dissolved.
Once sugar is dissolved, reduce heat and carefully add jam, stirring just until dissolved.
Remove from heat, let cool.
Add remaining 1/2 cup uncooked raspberry juice (Note: I think that adding the last 1/2 cup of raspberry juice at the end, rather than cooking it with the sugar, helps preserve some of the fresh raspberry flavor, as some flavor compounds are destroyed by heat).
Add chocolate syrup to mixture if desired

Chocolate Raspberry Mousse Cake Assembly

Let the cake layers cool. If they came out crowned, remove a thin slice off the top to level them (cut through carefully using cake leveler, large kitchen knife, or my preferred method: dental floss). Leveling the cakes also helps them absorb the raspberry syrup by exposing the inner crumb.

Put first layer on your cake plate. Drizzle evenly with up to 1/3 cup raspberry syrup. Spread with raspberry mousse (1/2 inch to 1 inch layer) that has already cooled in refrigerator for about 30 min. Put the cake assembly in fridge for another 30 min or longer to let the mousse stabilize more before placing second cake layer on top.

Add the second cake layer and drizzle it with 1/4 to 1/3 cup raspberry syrup. Pour and spread the chocolate ganache across the top and sides of the cake. Garnish top with 19 fresh raspberries (16 raspberries around edge, three in middle).


And, you're done! Yum! I hope you like this raspberry mousse chocolate cake!

BakerGal