52/99: Rose Red Velvet Cake

This weekend was the celebrated Georgia v. Ole Miss football game.  It is the first SEC game that Ole Miss has played so the grove was packed full of fans.  In honor of this festive occasion, I decided that our cake must be red so that we showed a little team spirit. We may not win any games this year but we'll still have a good time. 

Here's what happens at the eleven o'clock games: First, everyone heads to the grove in the morning and has a delicious breakfast (and maybe a few mimosas) including bagels, sausage balls, pigs in a blanket, fruit, and lots of other tasty treats.  When the time comes, everyone either heads to the game or sits in the grove to watch the game on one of the many TV screens suspended from a tent.   When you return to the tent, you eat lunch with your family and friends and then cut into the desserts.  When I returned, however, I discovered that the cake had already been cut into.  So here is a picture of the half eaten cake:

 

Rose made her red velvet cake into a valentine but I decided to double the recipe and make it a red velvet layer cake.  Of course I made the dreamy creamy white chocolate frosting to go with it because who would refuse cake with dreamy creamy white chocolate frosting?  On the outside, I covered it with fondant (obviously in a hurry as you can see that my fondant did not turn out perfectly) and put some dots on it to give it a little school spirit.


The cake itself was a typical butter cake, only it called for two bottles of red food coloring.  I have always thought that too much food coloring made a cake taste bad. And I know, red velvet cake is just chocolate cake with red food coloring, but still!  I angrily went to the grocery store (they're not cheap!) to buy two packages of food coloring but they didn't have the normal liquid food coloring; they only had the gel.


Gel food coloring is much stronger than the liquid-- that I know. In my experience, it takes about a thousand drops of liquid to equal what the gel does when your baking.  I decided to only put one bottle of gel in the cake since I didn't want to overpower it. Once I finished mixing the batter it looked a little pink.  I hesitantly added the other bottle, concerned that the cake was going to taste of sour food coloring.


But, alas, the cake was a success.  It was incredibly moist and the food coloring did not affect the taste at all. 


The pictures turned out horribly with the red tent above us but I attempted to take a piece of the actual cake to show you.  Check out how red it is:

I would definitely keep this red velvet recipe around. It didn't all get eaten as there was so much of it and so many options, but for the red velvet cake lover, this is definitely the cake.


Rose's Heavenly Cakes
Rose Red Velvet Cake- page 83