I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend and that lots of you enjoyed an extra day thanks to Presidents Day yesterday. I know that depending on what company I’ve worked for, their Presidents Day policies are always different; about half the places I’ve worked, I’ve gotten the day off and the other half, I haven’t.  It’s always nice to have that day off but you never know if people actually have it off or not. In my case, since I’m not employed full-time at the moment, I had the day off and so did Eric. We enjoyed the extra day and were busy all weekend working on house projects. And no, they weren’t fun projects, they were the pain in the a$$ type of projects. Poor Eric spent Saturday working on issues with our hot water heater and our only shower. I’m sure he learned a lot about this ancient house of ours, and its confusing piping, and about hot water heaters but when he finally came to bed at 1am on Saturday night, he was not excited to tell me about his new knowledge of our home’s inner workings. Sunday was spent cleaning up from Saturday and Monday was a continuation of that mixed in with some much needed R&R. Being a young homeowner is always an adventure, especially in an old house!

Alright, back to some recipes, again, I’ll reiterate that I haven’t been cooking quite as much as I’d like to. As I get larger and less mobile, being in the kitchen on my feet is harder and harder but today, I’m finally getting around to sharing with you my red velvet cake disaster followed by triumph.

This whole recipe testing began years ago. Obviously from this blog, I love red velvet cake. I remember the first time I ate a slice, my mom brought some home from a Christmas party when I was a kid and I fell in love with it.  She asked her friend for the recipe and that’s the way she’s been making me red velvet cake for as long as I can remember. I love that recipe, however it calls for 2 cups of vegetable oil; yes 2 whole giant cups! That’s ALOT of oil. And as I’ve gotten older, my poor intestines have decided they do not enjoy 2 cups of oil in one cake. My favorite red velvet cake recipe became my worst enemy; it was so good when I was eating it and then I’d regret it shortly after. I was a love/hate relationship and I was determined to find a recipe that I loved and that loved me back.

Over the last 10 years or so, I’ve been searching for that perfect red velvet recipe, in vain. Red velvet is a very difficult taste to get “just right.” You want to taste a hint of the cocoa in the recipe, but not so much that the cake tastes like a devils food cake dyed red. The oil adds the correct moistness and flavor but I really needed to avoid that much oil.

The images of the red velvet cake on my blog are from a recipe from Paula Deen and it was good, but not quite what I was looking for. It also looked great in the photos, it was the perfect red.

For my birthday last month, I decided it was time again to try a red velvet recipe. I had gotten a beautiful new cookbook from my in-laws for Christmas, it’s all vintage cake recipes, and the red velvet recipe was calling my name. This particular recipe include zero oil, already I was intrigued. I mixed up the ingredients and as my lovely red cakes were cooling, I mixed up what was supposed to be mascarpone cream cheese icing. Here was my first “red” flag (pun intended). The icing was like a thin glaze not a thick frosting. I began pouring cup after cup of powdered sugar into it and got nowhere fast. I put the icing in the fridge in hopes that the cream cheese and mascarpone would thicken up.

Two hours later, the icing was still runny but I attempted to put it on the cake. I iced the cake and quickly put the whole thing in the fridge to set. Set it did not. After giving up on my icing, I decided to cut a slice of this cake that I’d been thinking about for days. The cake was terrible. The flavor was off, the consistency wasn’t dense or moist. It was a complete failure. A failure that I didn’t take any photos of (sorry!) the evidence has been destroyed. I threw the entire cake away in the garbage disposal (which looked like a bloody mess thanks to the red cake) and went to bed. Low point.

Has this every happened to any of you? Everything in a recipe just goes completely wrong and you’re left with time wasted and something gross to eat? Ever feel like you have to eat it anyway since you spent so much time on it? Yeah, I’ve done that before too. But those just end up being unnecessary calories that aren’t worth it. I’ve learned to get over myself and throw the food away. Mistakes happen. They happen a lot in cooking/baking. It’s OK. Learn from it. I learned that both of these recipes were terrible and I should trust my instincts more. If the icing seems like its going to be too thin based on the recipe, then maybe opt for a different recipe instead.

A few days later, and after some research online, I was ready to try again and this time my red velvet cake ended up looking like this:

It looks decently normal!! I pulled a recipe that I found online from Bakerella and then used an icing recipe that I’ve made lots of times so I knew it would turn out. The recipe does call for 1.5 cups of vegetable oil. So I wasn’t cutting down on the oil very much, but it also called for buttermilk, an ingredient I liked. I have found that most recipes call for one or the other, this is the first one that calls for both. I wanted to see how it would come out.

The recipe is pretty standard. Mix the wet ingredients and dry ingredients separately, then slowly combine them all together in an electric mixer.

The cake batter should look like this:

Divide the batter evenly between two 8 or 9 inch cake pans.

Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees, until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool the cake completely, ice it with your favorite icing. (I prefer butter cream to cream cheese on my red velvet) Slice it up and enjoy!

Wow, I’m just realizing how terrible those colors look on camera, the lime green plate with my butcher block counter top and the red velvet cake. Whoops! Sorry people. I’m no photographer, I’m a cook. It tasted good and that’s all the matters! The taste wasn’t exactly “perfect” for me, I think it could have used a bit more salt and cocoa, however the consistency was perfect and (best point of all) it didn’t make me sick! Win.

A note about the icing: The recipe that I used from Bakerella was made with a cream cheese frosting and that is traditionally paired with red velvet cake. However, the original red velvet cake recipe from the Waldorf Astoria, in NYC, was made with a butter cream icing that was prepared on the stove top. I happen to prefer an easy version of vanilla butter cream with my red velvet cake. I suggest if you ever have the chance, you try your red velvet cake with lots of different icings. I also enjoy red velvet cake with a chocolate filling, it really brings out the cocoa flavor. Don’t pigeon hole yourself to the traditional, it’s never a bad idea to try cakes with different fillings and icings.

Here’s the Bakerella recipe link to her site, complete with her cream cheese frosting and might I add, much prettier photos of her cake! And here is my quick and easy butter cream icing recipe: