I will admit to having been dismissive of red velvet cake in the past, considering it to be bland in flavour and garish in colour. It tended to come in cupcake form with towering hats of super-sweet buttercream, which made it unpleasant and difficult to eat. The cult love for red velvet, inspiring scented candles and lip balms all smelling of synthetic vanilla, always struck me as a bit naff – the preserve of teenage girls queueing outside Instagram-bait bakeries. Why would you plump for a red velvet cupcake when you could have coffee and walnut or a lemon syrup-soaked sponge or a nobbly carrot cake? Red velvet was a cake for people who didn’t really like cake.
I was, however, doing the poor old red velvet cake a disservice because its massive popularity has resulted in most of today’s cakes bearing little relation to the true recipe.
A red velvet cake is not just a red sponge cake: the ‘velvet’ refers to the fineness of the crumb and is a term that has been used for cakes, pancakes and scone-like shortcakes since the 1800s. The addition of cocoa to the mixture created a very smooth soft crumb, hence the name. The exact origins of the cake are unclear, although it is always listed as being a classic of the American South, and recipes for cakes combining buttermilk and cocoa date back to the 19th century. The ‘red’ was originally the effect produced by the reaction between buttermilk and vinegar on the one hand and the cocoa on the other – although it’s fair to say that the original colour would have been more burgundy than fire engine.
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