24 January 2009

Red Velvet Cake





I've tried quite a few recipes for Red Velvet Cake in the past few years, and this is perhaps the best recipe I've tried so far. Having grown up with Italian cream cakes and mascarpone cheese in just about anything that called for cream cheese, I am love with the cream cheese frosting that also asks for mascarpone. The richest yet lightest cream flavored cheese around, mascarpone is a little expensive on this side of these United, making me long for Italian grocers (dear God, I miss Chicago), but it's for sure worth it for the beautiful touch it gives this cake.



I love only two cakes: red velvet with cream cheese frosting and those lame confetti cakes with rainbow chip icing. Yes, I'm lame. But you know what? Those are some tasty cakes. This cake I served for a New Year's Eve crab feed with my in-laws, and with a little less than a pint of frozen raspberries from my garden to either use or waste, I chose to decorate the cake with it. I also chopped a few pieces of chocolate that needed to be used and sprinkled some cocoa powder over the finished product. It turned out pretty damn fantastic, if I may say so myself... For a grad student budget, this was an extravagant yet well worth it splurge!



I am trying a new recipe for Red Velvet tomorrow, and will hopefully find something that compromises my taste for a less sweet cake from the myriad of overly sweet cake recipes out there!

3 comments:

Jessica@Foodmayhem said...

Red Velvet is always so pretty. I want to have some but I can't...no one seems to make it without food coloring. =(

EMC said...

Yeah, I have a friend who regularly complains of her food coloring allergy. Have you tried Italian Cream Cake? It's the closest I've come in taste to red velvet.

emily said...

You should try using beet juice- however, when I have used it for food coloring it usually turns out pink. But it is a good alternative to food coloring-