Red Velvet Cake

The name - Red Velvet - sounds like a mystery novel, or a steamy romance story! Well, this is a cake - but one with many stories about it. Here are a few I've found with my Internet research....

This creamy red decadent cake is usually thought of as a Southern speciality, but one theory is that the recipe was first baked in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. This story, around 1930, involves a woman who loved the cake so much she asked for the recipe, and after receiving it, she also received her hotel bill with an additional charge of $350 for the cake recipe! (Does this remind you of the Neiman Marcus $1000 Cookie recipe story?) 

The Southern origins of the cake are attributed to the love of cocoa, one of the main ingredients. The legend is that the ingredients of vinegar and buttermilk will turn the cocoa into a deeper red color. In all the recipes I've seen, the deep red color comes from an alarming amount of red food coloring. Thus another story develops, that of a spice and food coloring salesman in the depression who developed a recipe using a whole bottle of red food coloring to make the deepest red batter possible, and did very well with advertising his products in living color. Another story tells of bakers who during World War II could not get the red food color because of food rations, and used boiled red beets instead of food coloring for their secret recipes. This cake was even part of the story of the 1989 film Steel Magnolias - remember the armadillo-shaped red velvet cake served as the groom's cake? 

Whatever the stories are, this cake that may have first been considered a rich man's cake because of the once-expensive ingredients, is very affordable for us common folk now. My favorite recipe includes a Duncan Hines "Moist Deluxe Red Velvet Cake Mix" that can be whipped up quickly without staining your fingers and counters with all that food coloring! 

Red Velvet Poke Cake

Ingredients:

1 box Red Velvet cake mix

ingredients needed to make cake (eggs, oil & water)

1 (3.4 oz) box instant cheesecake-flavored pudding

2 cups milk

frozen whipped topping, thawed (1/2 - 3/4 tub)

10 Oreo cookies, crushed (optional)

red sugar sprinkles (optional)

Directions: Prepare cake mix according to package directions for a 9x13" cake. When cake is baked, remove from oven and allow to cool for a few minutes. Then, with a wooden spoon handle, a spatula handle, or other utensil, begin poking holes in the warm cake.  

Make sure the holes are deep and large enough for pudding to get all the way to the bottom of the cake. 

In a medium bowl, whisk together pudding mix with milk (the original recipes call for 2 pudding mixes and 4 cups milk. I think 1 mix + 2 cups milk is enough). Pour the pudding over the cake, pouring right into the holes as much as possible. Spread it all out using the back of the spoon, gently pushing pudding into the holes. 

Put the cake in the fridge to set and cool, about 2 hours. When the cake is completely cool, spread whipped topping completely over the pudding layer. Top with crushed Oreo cookies and red sugar sprinkles. 

Remember to refrigerate this cake before and after serving. It makes a festive and moist cake. When I served it at a family dinner, many thought the pudding 'tunnels' were strawberries baked into the cake.