With great power comes great responsibility. And with great baking comes the responsibility to bake for the various special occasions that come up for family members. For Leo's family this is actually really easy. His mother and youngest son are sugar addicts; they want their sugar pure and unadulterated. In fact I just take the sugar, heat it up in a spoon, apply a tourniquet and shoot it up (ok, I only do that for his mom. I just pour the sugar into Connor's mouth...kids are so innocent.) His older son is a bit of a harder sell, so when he requested Red Velvet cake for his birthday I was happy to comply, despite disliking the flavor.

 

Perhaps I should back-track a little bit and explain my history with red velvet. The first time I can remember trying it wasn't that long ago. I spent much of my early college years baking treats as a form of social currency, a way of ingratiating myself with the older boys I tended to have class with, and thus half-formed crushes on. My first three newspaper editors were all of the older and male variety, though the first was a schizophrenic and the second a compulsive liar. So when the third one was just mildly depressed and had good taste in music, he got a birthday cake. In what was possibly the only instance of reciprocal baking I've ever experienced, the week of my birthday he presented me with a 9x9 casserole pan, inside of which appeared to be some sort of cake-like food. A thick schmear of canned frosting topped the creation, obscuring any hint as to the innards. When I cut into the concoction little bubbles of a viscous red fluid oozed out onto the frosting, creating pink arterial trees. This was, of course, a red velvet cake. I worked my way through a piece, as did some of my more adventurous friends. Then it got put into the dorm fridge. And was never pulled out, because no one was ever that hungry. A week later and it migrated to the bathroom sink to receive last rights. Except the priest never showed up. There wasn't much about it that seemed likely to degrade, but still when time rolled around to go home for Thanksgiving I deemed it should go back into the fridge during my absence. I didn't want it attacking a hand towel.

 

Enter stage left, the co-eds have all come back from break and it's well into December. The cake is still in its pan, probably propping up some books by this point. Enter stage right, another older male crush-friend in my room and on the prowl for grub. Usually there would be a freshly baked supply, but give me a break I hadn't stocked up yet. He finds the cake, and a spoon. "Don't eat that," I tell him. "It's really old. And I'm not sure it's cake." He pokes it with the spoon, carves out a piece and says he's not concerned. "No, really. A boy made that. Last month. And it's oozing." All the same he ate close to half of the remaining cake. He didn't end up in the hospital, but watching red slime gloop out the pores of a dessicated cake covered with industrial strength frosting forever hardened my heart against the great Southern classic that is Red Velvet Cake.

 

But you only turn 10 once and that's what Ben wanted for his birthday.

 

It seems like many a young baking lass runs into the challenge of le velvet rouge. Or the "Waldorf Astoria Cake" as you may find it called. In fact, the cake and it's connection to the hotel is the granddaddy of the Neiman Marcus cookie email hoax. While there are many traditional takes on the cake, I found myself drawn to the recipe posted at Smitten Kitchen. My reasons? Firstly, like me, Deb doesn't really get the appeal of a food whose primary flavor is a color. Her recipe also used the most cocoa of the ones I gathered and included the conversion to use red gel coloring, which I hoped would tame the 'red' flavor a bit. 

 

Helpful Tips I pulled from the other recipes: (1) Mix the food coloring and the cocoa powder together to form a paste which will help keep from having random cocoa swirls in the batter. (2) refrigerate the cakes the night before frosting (especially if you cut the layers, as I did.) 

End Results: I still hate Red Velvet Cake. The birthday boy really loved it though. Leo also really liked the cake, but not the icing. He tends to like really simple desserts with flavor depth, rather than complexity (like a really good yet classic creme brulee) so for him to get seconds on a cake is rare. He especially complimented the moist, dense crumb. All three of us agree that it would taste better with a different frosting (and I pretty much only eat cream cheese frosting). They thought a traditional butter cream (ala Publix) and I think something like a Swiss meringue butter cream would go well.

 

The best part of the experience came at the end. I baked the recipe in two 8" rounds (despite the instructions to use three) and then cut each in half, in order to maximize the amount of frosting and create a nice presentation. However we were rushed to frost and eat so I couldn't let the crumb coat sit long enough and it got slide-y. Deciding all way lost on fancy presentation, I had Ben help me decorate it...to humorous results. I may still not like red velvet, but I'm pretty happy with the end result.

 

It's feeling like a hot PoP Summer with CiaoCatherine getting published in a pretty cool DC rag, and Sarah adding in some NASCAR coverage to beef up the "Sticks" section of her blog. I get to see the wonderful Ms. Zell next weekend...maybe we'll do something exciting enough for a double-post!