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

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Daniel Myers:
>For a long time the recipe for this cake was distributed only 
>through chain letters - on and off the internet.

My first glimpse of it on a website suggested that it was The Other 
Big Secret Recipe (after the Niemann-Marcus Cookie, of course) being 
distributed via chain letters.

>   My wife baked it once or twice many years back, and one of those 
>times she frosted it with bright green frosting.

You sure this wasn't a watermelon subtlety ;-) ?

>   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

I heard about it today in a very brief mention on The Anti-Rush Radio 
Network (a.k.a. Air America), which suggested it's a Tennessee thing.

I think I've seen parts of "Steel Magnolias", and am aware of the 
Armadillo Cake scene, but every Southern lady I know who has met my 
mother-in-law refers to her by saying, "Forget steel magnolias. She's 
an Iron Lotus Blossom." So perhaps I'm somewhat inured.

As I say, it doesn't sound bad at all, but I'm a little alarmed at 
the amount of food coloring called for. I'm thinking of skeletons 
being dug up in the distant future, bright red. (Okay, I've had some 
bad experiences with green food coloring that was... shall we say... 
not metabolized properly...)

Adamantius

>
>
>
>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
>
>_______________________________________________
>Sca-cooks mailing list
>Sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
>http://www.ansteorra.org/mailman/listinfo/sca-cooks