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

[AEllin Olafs dotter]

I first heard of this in college, from a friend. She was local, from 
Ohio, and this had been her favorite cake throughout childhood. Her Mom 
made it with *4* bottles of red dye...

And, my friend had developed an allergy to the substances used in food 
coloring (coal tar, I want to say?), and anything else they were used 
in. (Don't remember, at this date, what all she couldn't eat/use... 
IIRC, the list was impressive.)  Which is the reason I remember her 
talking about it... I was sure the cake was to blame, she was sure it 
wasn't... and she said it just wasn't the same, didn't taste as good, 
without the dye. Her mom would sometimes, for a treat for her, make it 
with merely a single bottle, and she could eat a sliver of that, but it 
wasn't as good...

So - that brings it to Northern Ohio in the sixties and seventies... I 
met her in '74. Long before the internet chain letters. Don't remember 
her calling it Red Velvet, though I've heard that name since - just Red 
Cake. I am happy to say that, the year they were kind enough to invite 
me for Thanksgiving, they did *not* have it, or anything else I would 
hesitate to eat...


AEllin


Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:

> 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.
> 
>


>
> 
> 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
> 
>>
>