Red Velvet Chocolate Cake

Cake Dreams is excited to announce a new flavour and more importantly, a new colour cake. Red Velvet is, as the name suggests, a red cake. But better still, it's a red chocolate cake! Based on a traditional recipe from the southern United States, Red Velvet is a deliciously moist layered cake with a unique and funky tone. More palette for your palate, as it were.

The basic list of ingredients includes buttermilk, butter, flour and cocoa. The amount of cocoa used varies in different recipes. Use either cream cheese or buttercream for frosting.

Most Red Velvet recipes use red food colouring* but there's also some serious natural science going on too. Reactions between the acidic and alkali ingredients (like the vinegar and buttermilk for instance) better reveals the red anthocyanin present in cocoa, enhancing the colors and also making it light and fluffy. Interestingly, back in World War 2 when food was rationed, bakers used boiled beetroot juice to enhance the hues - and it's still used today. Beetroot has the added advantage of retaining moisture as well.

Chemistry and history lesson over, let's eat some fabulous new cake. Enjoy!

* Food colorings have had a bad reputation in the past, but now they are rigorously tested by various bodies around the world and are don't trigger any of the adverse effects they used to - in fact most are based on purely natural ingredients nowadays.