The Baking Bible: Red Velvet Bundt
People seem to either love or hate the Red Velvet cake. I blame it on the unnatural bright red color that can only come from a bunch of terrible chemicals that may or may not make you crazy. Some people don't like the fact that it is a light chocolate cake--neither a full bodied chocolate experience nor a vanilla cake but somewhere in between. In fact, now that I write this up, it is a wonder there are fans of the Red Velvet cake at all!
I hate the chemicals, but I don't mind the light chocolate flavor, if in fact there is flavor. The first time I made Rose's red velvet cake, was for the Heavenly Cakes bakethrough, and I found the cake to be lacking in chocolate flavor. Great texture, but that was all. So this time, I heeded the note that suggests increasing the cocoa powder for a more chocolaty flavor. It was a good note, as the cake was lightly chocolaty like one would expect.
The original recipe calls for the rose shaped bundt pan from NordicWare, but I recently acquired the Heritage bundt pan and was eager to use that. Plus, I do not need any more bundt pans.
The cake is super simple to mix. Only egg whites are used, which is nice because my egg white stash is growing yet again. There's a mixture of oil and butter for the fat, which keeps it moist a little longer yet there's still a little butteriness. Good things.
The recipe calls for glazing the cake in a raspberry sauce and serving with whipped cream. I just couldn't gather the energy to make a raspberry sauce so I skipped the glaze and served it White Ganache, aka White Chocolate Whipped Cream. This way those who insist on the traditional pairing of Red Velvet Cake and Cream Cheese Frosting wouldn't have to stretch their palates too much. The recipe is in The Cake Bible, and basically you melt about 3 oz of good white chocolate with some of the cream, then set aside to cool. The rest of the cream is whipped until beater marks show, then the chocolate-cream mixture is poured in and the whole thing beat to stiff peaks. I stopped before stiff peaks because we were impatiently waiting for cake.
The White Ganache almost stole the show, and we began dreaming of all the other uses Rose suggests for the stuff. Eating with fresh berries, turning into white chocolate mousse, filling a chocolate cake, just eating out of hand or on top of ice cream....
Red is one of the hardest colors to photograph properly (especially with my amateur setup) so the colors in my pictures are all over the place. Despite the overall darkness, this photo gives a proper show of the fun house red color.
A delicious cake, but I will stick to Nigel Slater's chocolate-beet cake when I have a hankering for Red Velvet.
I hate the chemicals, but I don't mind the light chocolate flavor, if in fact there is flavor. The first time I made Rose's red velvet cake, was for the Heavenly Cakes bakethrough, and I found the cake to be lacking in chocolate flavor. Great texture, but that was all. So this time, I heeded the note that suggests increasing the cocoa powder for a more chocolaty flavor. It was a good note, as the cake was lightly chocolaty like one would expect.
The original recipe calls for the rose shaped bundt pan from NordicWare, but I recently acquired the Heritage bundt pan and was eager to use that. Plus, I do not need any more bundt pans.
The cake is super simple to mix. Only egg whites are used, which is nice because my egg white stash is growing yet again. There's a mixture of oil and butter for the fat, which keeps it moist a little longer yet there's still a little butteriness. Good things.
The recipe calls for glazing the cake in a raspberry sauce and serving with whipped cream. I just couldn't gather the energy to make a raspberry sauce so I skipped the glaze and served it White Ganache, aka White Chocolate Whipped Cream. This way those who insist on the traditional pairing of Red Velvet Cake and Cream Cheese Frosting wouldn't have to stretch their palates too much. The recipe is in The Cake Bible, and basically you melt about 3 oz of good white chocolate with some of the cream, then set aside to cool. The rest of the cream is whipped until beater marks show, then the chocolate-cream mixture is poured in and the whole thing beat to stiff peaks. I stopped before stiff peaks because we were impatiently waiting for cake.
The White Ganache almost stole the show, and we began dreaming of all the other uses Rose suggests for the stuff. Eating with fresh berries, turning into white chocolate mousse, filling a chocolate cake, just eating out of hand or on top of ice cream....
Red is one of the hardest colors to photograph properly (especially with my amateur setup) so the colors in my pictures are all over the place. Despite the overall darkness, this photo gives a proper show of the fun house red color.
A delicious cake, but I will stick to Nigel Slater's chocolate-beet cake when I have a hankering for Red Velvet.
It really turned out beautiful! Now I have to go searching for this white chocolate whipped cream you speak of!
ReplyDeleteLooks beautiful!! Love the redness though!
ReplyDeleteNo fair! You can't bring up white chocolate whipped cream and not provide a recipe for it! Or a place to get the recipe. I searched your site and couldn't locate it. Are you going to share it with us now that you have us drooling for it? It sounds to absolutely delicious!! If you don't want to put it on your site, you can email it to me (nbdillon25@gmail.com)
ReplyDeleteNorma, thanks for your comment! I'm not a fan of publishing other people's copyrighted works so I won't be giving out the recipe for the White Ganache. It's in the Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum, which you can probably find at bookstores or possibly your library. I bet if you did a Google search you'd find it out there. Good luck! It's really delicious so well worth the trouble.
ReplyDeleteI read somewhere that Red Velvet Cake was created by some guy who owned a red food color company and was looking for a way to sell more product. That just makes the red color even more distasteful. I resisted it, but in the end found an appreciation for it. Maybe it was the cake itself. Anyway, as I said on FB, your cake looks delicious without the glaze. Very pretty. It seems to me that you captured the red of the cake beautifully. Nice post.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info. I have the Cake Bible but haven't looked at it lately so will have to look at it again. It just sounds so delicious so will definitely have to look it up. I've been enjoying your comments on Rose's recipes and have tried some of them after reading your posts. Will have to pull the book out again ad look at it. Thanks for your informative posts and wonderful information.
ReplyDeleteThank YOU, Norma, for being a loyal reader! Comment more often, if you'd like :) The White Ganache is on page 278, I think. It is the last recipe in the Ganache section. I certainly have put The Cake Bible aside since I've been so focused on Rose's more recent books, but I'm determined to come back to it, as it is really a treasure trove of amazing information on all things cake and frosting (one of my favorite subjects).
DeleteThe heritage tin is such a great shape, your cake looks great and love the dark red internal colour that the optional extra cocoa powder has brought. Serving it with the white chocolate whipped cream is a lovely (and delicious) idea.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great tutorial! Thanks to you, I will serve my cake with the white chocolate ganache, sounds like a beautiful combination of flavours. I didn't care much for the amount of colouring required either. Your cake is gorgeous, though. Great choice of bundt pan!
ReplyDeleteI love the pan you used. I almost got that one but didn't. I would have just eaten the whipped cream. Good job!
ReplyDeleteI love how your cake came out!!! I can tell you that the Raspberry Italian meringue was a real good choice to go along with the cake, very light and fluffy.
ReplyDelete