Red Food Coloring and Volcano Fizz

I originally tried to set this opening the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song, but I just couldn’t do it. I’ve got nothing. I have been working on this post for two weeks. Maybe it’s writer’s block or maybe I was uninspired, or maybe Red Velvet cake is not as exciting as I had hoped.

I first learned about Red Velvet cake in my teens when I saw Steel Magnolias. Julia Roberts character was getting married and in the South they do groom’s cakes. (That’s just how they roll…) So they did this red velvet cake in the shape of an armadillo. So when you cut into it, it kind of looked like blood. As a teenager, I remember finding this fascinating, disturbing, and all around awesome. This is most likely because of my twisted sense of humor.

I didn’t try Red Velvet cake until some years later. I loved them! I went through a brief obsession with them…purchasing them and making them from Duncan Hines mixes. I even went as far as making a red velvet cake with brown sugar cream cheese frosting and covered with a pound of delicately fried bacon. (You may think that sounds disgusting, but it was probably the most delicious cake I have ever made.) However, I had not made a Red Velvet from scratch – ever.

In mid-August we celebrated my co-worker Kyle’s birthday. Kyle is originally from Georgia. So to honor his roots and his favorite kind of cake ever, I tackled the Red Velvet cake. Never to be boring, I wanted to spice it up and add a twist. I did a ton of research on Red Velvet cakes to see if I could pair them with anything or change them, but there really wasn’t anything out there that showed a creative red velvet cake. Everything was very basic: Red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. Luckily, I have wheels turning in my head constantly and I settled on doing a pecan praline brittle in the middle. (I thought about doing an almond brittle, which sounded awesome, but I’m allergic to almonds so I opted to change the nut.)

Red Velvet with Pecan Praline Brittle Layer Cake (Cake adapted from Pinch My Salt's Family Recipe)

Cake Ingredients:
2 ½ cups cake flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 TBSP cocoa powder
2 oz red food coloring (2 entire individual bottles)
½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 ½ cups of sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp white vinegar
1 tsp baking soda

Pecan Praline Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
¼ cup water
1 cup pecans, chopped

Cream Cheese Frosting Ingredients:
1 ½ - 8 oz packages of Cream Cheese, room temperature
1 ½ sticks Unsalted Butter, room temperature
5 cups Powdered Sugar
2 TBSP Sour Cream
1 tsp Vanilla Extract

Red Velvet Cake Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Butter and flour 2 – 9” cake rounds.
In a medium bowl whisk together the cake flour, baking powder, and salt. (It is SUPER important to use the cake flour and not All-Purpose flour. All purpose flour is not going to work as well, be fluffy, or taste good. BUY the CAKE FLOUR. It took me a while to find in the baking aisle, but that’s because it comes in a box, not a bag.)
In a small bowl, mix the cocoa and the food coloring together until they form a thin paste.
In a large bowl, beat the butter, vanilla, and sugar together. Once they are creamed together, add the eggs one at a time, mixing between each egg.
Add 1/3 of the flour mixture and ½ of the buttermilk. Scrape down the sides of the bowl after each addition. Alternating, until everything is combined.
In a small bowl, mix the vinegar and the baking soda together. (Yes, it will fizz.) Quickly add the mixed vinegar/baking soda mixture to the cake batter and mix it together. Split the batter between the two pans.
Bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.

Pecan Praline Brittle:
Line a jelly roll pan with parchment paper. In a medium saucepan, combine the sugar and the water. Cook over medium heat, without stirring. The mixture will become a deep amber color (caramel forming). It takes about 15 minutes or a little less. Keep your eye on it, because it goes from amber to burning VERY quickly. Remove the boiling sugar from the heat and stir in the pecans. Pour/spread the pecans on the parchment paper and let them cool.

Cream Cheese Frosting Directions:
Beat the cream cheese and the butter in a large bowl until fluffy. Beat in the sugar, then the sour cream and vanilla. Beat until smooth.

Assembly:
Place one of the red velvet layers, top down, on a platter or cake stand. Put a considerable amount of cream cheese frosting to cover the top of the cake. Break the brittle into smaller pieces and place on top of the cream cheese frosting. Carefully, add some more cream cheese frosting over the pecan brittle. Place the top layer of the cake on top of the brittle. Frost the top and sides of the cake with the remaining frosting. (You might have a little left over, but it goes great with graham crackers as a nice snack.)

So my pecan praline brittle was a little burnt, because I overcooked my sugar. However, I still used it. I thought of tossing it, because it was really smokey, but luckily it worked and balanced out with the sweetness of the frosting and the cake. The brittle was a little difficult to cut through because it was, well, brittle.

The cake itself was good, moist and rich and bright red. However, I think that it was a lot of extra work without a lot of reward. It tasted delicious and was obviously better than a boxed cake, but spending $10 on red food coloring was kind of absurd and timing the baking soda with the vinegar was a little too much work for me. (I felt like the volcano science experiment in the 5th grade. My volcano was a giant rock we drilled a hole in. It was pretty life – like.) But if you have the time, patience, and aren’t afraid of dying your fingers a little red, definitely try to make it from scratch. Or make it from scratch just once, so you know what’s up.

Kyle loved the cake, as did the rest of the staff. So as long as our Georgia peach was happy and it wasn’t in the shape of an Armadillo, then it was a job well done.At work we sell these crazy little dolls called Sonny Angels. They're vegetable head dolls with little angel wings and little male genitals. They are a huge joke at work. You buy the box and you don't know which one you're going to get. They have become the cake topper for all the staff birthday cakes. They're a little crazy, but they're our cult classic.