[Sca-cooks] OT/OOP: Wazzup with "Red Velvet Cake"

[Daniel Myers]

For a long time the recipe for this cake was distributed only through 
chain letters - on and off the internet.  My wife baked it once or 
twice many years back, and one of those times she frosted it with 
bright green frosting.  It thereafter was called "ogre cake" in our 
family because the first comment made when cutting the bright green 
cake was "Oh God, It's Red!"

You can find details of the chain letter at snopes.com - search under 
"red velvet cake".

- Doc



On May 10, 2004, at 12:08 PM, Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:

> Hullo, the list!
>
> I just heard my first mention of Red Velvet Cake on the radio five 
> minutes ago, and I went looking for a recipe, only to find it just a 
> little frightening.
>
> It appears to be a more-or-less innocuous, lightly-cocoa-flavored 
> cream cake (in the sense that you cream together the fat and sugar to 
> a very light, foamy consistency before adding the other ingredients, 
> which seem to be fairly common, except perhaps for a dash of vinegar, 
> often seen in Southern pie crust recipes). So far, so good.
>
> That is, until you get to the _TWO_OUNCES_ of red food coloring added 
> to the batter. That's 1/4 cup.
>
> It seems that there are heretical recipes that call for a mere one 
> ounce, but those are inferior because the crumb of the cake is a deep 
> pink, and not, strictly speaking, red. It is rumored that you get 
> points taken off if the powdered micro-grains of cocoa are visible in 
> your finished cake.
>
> Is anyone else reminded of the Red Raspberry Zinger cereal-ad debacle 
> in Stephen King's novel "Cujo"?
>
> Okay, guys, let's hear the pitch. Is this really something people eat?
>
> Adamantius