Red Velvet Cake--HELP!?

Question

Does Red Velvet cake have cream cheese frosting or a 'cooked' white frosting? I have two recipes for Red Velvet I want to try. One calls for NO cocoa, one has cocoa, one is cream cheese frosting, one is a cooked frosting. I'm thinking about making both cakes with both frostings, but I'm at a loss--which is 'real' red velvet cake?

Recipe 1--http://allrecipes.com/recipe/red-velvet-cake-i/detail.aspx

Recipe 2--http://www.webspawner.com/users/cly421/

Answer 1

Red Velvet Cake is chocolate cake tinted red with red food coloring. I have always had it with cream cheese icing. The cooked frosted in the "all recipes" recipes seems weird to me because it has flour in it (probably for thickening). If you want a cooked icing find a recipe for "7 minute icing". It has a marshmallow cream taste. It is really good on a devil's food cake.

Answer 2

Almost all the recipes i've found for red velvet cake, have cocoa in them...what makes it red velvet is the red food coloring. It would also appear that the original has cream cheese frosting.

Answer 3

1 cup vegetable shortening
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon cocoa powder
2 ounces red food coloring
2 1/2 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vinegar
White frosting, recipe follows
White Frosting:
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk
1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
In the bowl of a mixer, cream together the shortening, eggs and sugar. In a separate small bowl, mix together the cocoa and food coloring. Add the paste to the shortening mixture. Sift the flour and salt together over parchment. Add to the batter alternately with the buttermilk in 3 additions. Add the vanilla extract. Fold in the baking soda and vinegar. Pour the batter into 2 greased 9-inch cake pans. Bake for 30 minutes or until an inserted cake tester comes out clean. Let cool on a cooling rack. Invert the cakes from the pans.

Frosting: Over medium heat, cook the flour and milk until thickened. Let cool. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Beat in the flour mixture.

Frost the top of the first layer with frosting and set the second layer on top. Frost the entire cake with remaining frosting.


You can use either frosting though. Whichever you like.

Answer 4

Traditionally, Red Velvet cake has cocoa and a cream cheese frosting.

The other version is either a lighter recipe, or one for people with specific food allergies.

Answer 5

I would use cocoa and I would make the cream cheese frosting.
Cream cheese
10x confectionate sugar
1 stick of butter
enjoy

Answer 6

I dont know about the cocoa, but I know that the real one has cream cheese frosting.. it is by far my fave cake.. what time should I stop by? LOL :)

Answer 7

I don’t think you have to worry. I don’t believe there is a way to find the original, and the story is shrouded in Urban Legend. I’ve seen the amount of the bill for the recipe to be $100, $250, $350, and $500. Take your pick of recipes and frostings. Or make it the way YOU want it.

All of these purport to be "The" Waldorf Astoria Hotel's Red Velvet Cake.

(1)
Although the details are sketchy at best, red velvet cake is not as Southern as many like to think. The story, which began circulating some time in the 1940s, claimed that Manhattan's elegant Waldorf-Astoria granted a diner's request for the recipe, then a short time later sent her a bill in the amount of $100. The angry woman, apparently with revenge in mind, then began circulating the recipe along with the story.

(2)
Waldorf-Astoria Red Velvet Cake Recipe
Submitted by: rec food recipes Susan K. Wilkerson

Ingredients:
1/2 cup Shortening
1 1/2 cup Sugar
2 Eggs
2 ounces Red food coloring
2 tablespoons Cocoa -- heaping
2 1/4 cups Plain flour
1 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1 teaspoon Baking soda
1 cup Buttermilk
1 tablespoon Vinegar
1 teaspoon Butter Flavoring (if desired)
***Frosting***
3 tablespoons Flour
1 cup Butter (Not Margarine- you can tell the difference in the flavor).
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1 cup Milk
1 cup granulated sugar


Directions:

Cream Shortening, sugar and eggs. Make a paste with coloring and cocoa and add to mixture. Add salt and flour with buttermilk and vanilla. Alternately add soda and vinegar and don't beat- just blend. Bake in two 9-inch pans (greased and floured) for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Layers may be split to make four.

*I imagine you could use a single layer flat pan instead of 2 round ones- I've not done it before.

Frosting:

Cook flour and milk on low heat until thick. Then cool (I put it in the freezer for this.). Cream sugar, butter, and vanilla until fluffy. Add to flour-milk mixture. Beat until mixture is like whipped cream. Spread on layers. Sprinkle with nuts if desired (I don't).

*sometimes when we're going to make the frosting, we've been known to double it because it is soooo good!

This recipe for Waldorf-Astoria Red Velvet Cake serves/makes 10

(3)
Waldorf-Astoria Red Velvet Cake
Since we're talking about recipes and urban legends again, here's my contribution. :) Below is the recipe that the Neiman-Marcus urban legend grew from... and it's not even a cookie. That's the "beauty" of urban legends - they change over the years. The recipe below was given to me by Urban Legend Master Jan Harold Brunvand as part of my annual Christmas cookbook a few years back.

Red Velvet Cake
From Jan Harold Brunvand

Here is the Red Velvet Cake (aka "$500 cake" or "Waldorf-Astoria Cake") recipe distributed since the 1950s (at least) by the Adams Extract company of Austin, TX. It's just one version of this folkloric dessert, and a good one. The Adams products, of course, may be substituted if you do not live in Texas or nearby where they are sold:

Cake:
1/2 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. "Adams best" vanilla
1 tsp. Adams butter flavor
1 1/2 oz. bottle Adams red color
3 tbsp (level) cocoa
2 1/2 cups sifted cake flour
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp vinegar
1 tsp. soda

Frosting
3 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup milk
1 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
2 tsp. "Adams Best" vanilla
1/4 tsp. Adams Butter Flavor

Make the cake. Cream shortening, sugar, eggs, flavors. Make a paste of cocoa and food coloring, add to first mixture. Alternately add flour and buttermilk. Mix soda and vinegar in small bowl; add to batter. Blend. Bake in 3-9" or 10" pans for 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees. Let cool completely. Cover with frosting.

Make frosting. Cook milk, flour, salt, until thick; stirring constantly. Let cool. Cream shortening and sugar very well; add flavors. Combine with the first mixture; beat well.

Tell legend while serving. (Reference, Brunvand, The Vanishing Hitchhiker, NY: W. W. Norton, 1981, 154-160; more information coming in Brunvand, The Brain Drain and other Timely Tales Urbana: Univ. of Ill.Press, 1999.)

(4)
This site gives no less than six recipes for the Waldorf-Astoria Red Velvet Cake.

Answer 8

You can make it either way but, red velvet with cream cheese is my favorite of all cakes. Yum.

Answer 9

that is only a theory. i do not trust it reason there are various issues appropriate to cancer and that would not make experience. The pink dye will be appropriate - notwithstanding that's in user-friendly words a theory, and merely because you want pink velvet cake does no longer mean that you receives cancer. (surprisingly in case you eat it reasonably - one slice often times, no longer an finished cake an afternoon). :]