Make a Bakery-Worthy Crimson Velvet Cake

With its signature purple hue and swoops of downy white frosting, the purple velvet cake is an iconic American dessert. However when commercially produced or constructed from a boxed combine, it has the tendency to be overbaked and bone-dry, with a saccharine taste that lacks complexity and a garish hue that calls to thoughts a self-conscious teenager armed with a giant bottle of hair dye. Nonetheless, step right into a bakery that takes its craft severely, and also you’ll discover {that a} correctly made purple velvet cake could be a factor of magnificence: layers of moist scarlet cake flavored with bittersweet cocoa and tangy buttermilk stacked with thick, tart, and buttery cream cheese frosting, every chunk as lush as…nicely, velvet. Consider it extra like Lucille Ball’s purple hair—the vivid coloration serves solely to reinforce the charisma of a star that already has a lot going for it.

With cautious consideration paid to the elements and technique used, anybody could make a purple velvet cake that’s a feast for each the eyes and the style buds. The star elements of purple velvet cake—pure cocoa powder, buttermilk, and baking soda—assist to leaven the cake, however are additionally accountable for the chemical response that first gave the cake its iconic coloration. A couple of drops of purple meals coloring assist to additional improve the pure coloration of the cake, guaranteeing a crumb that’s inarguably purple. Buttermilk and brown sugar retains the cake moist, whereas creaming the butter at room temperature helps to aerate the batter, leading to a effective, tender cake. 

If the considered assembling and adorning a layered purple velvet cake feels too daunting, haven’t any concern. We’ve included an possibility for cupcakes, too—that are simpler to embellish and simply as scrumptious.

Why the Crimson: The Story of Crimson Velvet Cake’s Origins

In her award-winning cookbook BraveTart, former Critical Eats editor Stella Parks paperwork the evolution of the purple velvet cake and traces the origins of the dessert to the wedding of two different standard sweets from the late 1800s—the velvet cake and the satan’s cake. These recipes formally merged in identify and elements when a recipe for “Velvet Cocoa Cake” was revealed in a 1911 difficulty of Ohio’s Elyria Chronicle. A couple of issues distinguished this cake that stay on in as we speak’s purple velvet cake. 

Essentially the most notable is the usage of a combination of pure cocoa powder and buttermilk within the batter. In contrast to the Dutch-process cocoa powder most bakers depend on as we speak, pure cocoa powder incorporates larger ranges of anthocyanins, water-soluble pigments accountable for the reddish-purple hues in vegetables and fruit. As cookbook writer and Critical Eats contributor Nik Sharma wrote in his information to pomegranate molasses, “when combined into an acidic answer like lime juice or vinegar, [anthocyanins] flip purple.” The mixture of acidic buttermilk and cocoa powder produced a batter with a reddish hue, albeit one nearer to mahogany than crimson.

Quickly after the introduction of the buttermilk and cocoa powder combo, maroon truffles like “Crimson Chocolate Cake” and “Crimson Satan’s Meals” have been exhibiting up in newspapers and cookbooks throughout the nation, and by the Forties, the purple velvet cake was nicely established within the American baking repertoire; it even appeared within the 1943 version of Irma S. Rombauer’s iconic Pleasure of Cooking. And whereas not a purple velvet cake in identify, the chocolate satan’s meals cake tinted purple with dye in Freda DeKnight’s 1948 Date With a Dish: A Prepare dinner Guide of American Negro Recipes sounds identical to one.

As for the “purple” within the identify, Stella means that as some recipes included proportionally extra buttermilk and fewer chocolate, utilizing “purple” merely distinguished the cake from the “inky-black crumb of a correct satan’s meals.” Many readers of these recipes, nevertheless, have been disenchanted after they weren’t capable of create the crimson coloration of the cake promised by the identify. 

“Presumably annoyed with outcomes that didn’t stay as much as the hype,” writes Stella, “Lynn Chambers popularized doctoring buttermilk-cocoa truffles with a teaspoon of purple dye in her syndicated kitchen column in 1942.” Across the identical time, Texas-based Adams Extract Firm started selling their dyes with a recipe for mahogany cake coloured with purple dye. 

As of late, purple velvet cake has grow to be one of the vital iconic American desserts. Notably, it’s an important a part of many Juneteenth celebrations as we speak, as the colour purple is symbolic of Black resilience and sacrifice. “I do suppose that’s one of many the reason why purple velvet cake is now a meals that individuals now affiliate with the Juneteenth vacation,” Nicole A. Taylor, writer of Watermelon and Crimson Birds, tells GastroObscura. Although the dessert wasn’t a part of the celebration in its early days, it shortly grew to become part of the Juneteenth desk as folks considered extra purple meals to incorporate of their celebrations of the vacation.

Along with Juneteenth, purple velvet cake is great for Valentine’s Day, anniversaries, and birthdays, however in fact there’s no want to attend for a selected vacation to make this fabulous cake.

The Key Strategies to Making Crimson Velvet Cake

The recipe that follows is the results of rounds of testing and tweaking to provide what I imagine is the best purple velvet cake: one with an opulent, velvety crumb that’s flavored with brown sugar, buttermilk, cocoa powder, and vanilla. Whereas not needed, just a few drops of meals coloring lend the cake an undeniably vibrant shade of scarlet. I thought-about utilizing extra “pure” colorants like beets, pomegranate juice, and freeze-dried purple fruits for the purple coloration, however every of these choices provides flavors that aren’t typical for a traditional purple velvet cake. I believe it is effective to easily lean on meals coloring for that coloration, to the diploma attaining a really purple tone is necessary to you; it will not be, through which case, be happy to go away the meals coloring out. 

One of many keys to attaining the right crumb lies within the alternative of cocoa powder. You’ll wish to use pure cocoa powder and never Dutch processed; the upper acidity in pure cocoa reacts with the cake’s baking soda and buttermilk to correctly leaven the cake. Pure cocoa can be lighter in coloration than Dutch processed cocoa, making it simpler for the purple to point out by the chocolate’s brown.

The temperature of your elements is essential, too. Butter is most pliable at room temperature, making it excellent for aerating your truffles when beating it with sugar till fluffy. Watch out to not overmix as soon as your flour is added, although, as overbeating the batter will develop an excessive amount of gluten and make the cake robust.

As for frosting, my private desire is to reinforce the buttermilk tang of the cake with a cream cheese frosting, however there’s an extended historical past of topping velvet truffles with starch-thickened Ermine frosting, so I’ve included that as an possibility as nicely.

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