Cupcake Digest: The Red Velvet Cupcake

Red Velvet from Cappellino's Crazy Cakes

First Edition

Here is our first ever edition of Cupcake Correspondents Cupcake Digest!

The Red Velvet Cake or Cupcake has surely become popular with consumers, and is often referred to as the “signature” cupcake of many cupcakeries. Here at Cupcake Correspondents we refer to the red velvet cupcake as “The Great Equalizer”, because we can guarantee that wherever and whatever cupcakery we walk into there will be a red velvet cupcake available. So what makes this yummy dessert concoction so appealing? Well, let us explore this red velvet mystery and see if we can find out…

A quick search on the Internet of the history of Red Velvet cake will present you with many stories about the origin of this cake, but honestly we don’t really know who or where this particular recipe came from. One thing that is commonly agreed upon by cupcake scholars is that the cake started making headlines in the 1920s at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. Which is a bit odd considering we associate red velvet as a Southern cake not a New England cake.

The name is a bit more interesting… the term “velvet” has come to be known in cake circles as a denotation of any cake that has especially fine crumbs. Where as the term “red” refers to the cakes red color. But why is red velvet cake… well… red? Here comes a chemistry lesson for you!

The basic ingredients of red velvet cake must include: butter, flour, sugar, brown sugar, coco powder and some sort of acid (vinegar or buttermilk). It is the chemical reaction of the anthocyanin (red vegetable pigments) in the coco powder and the recipe's acid component that produces a red hue color to the cake. This chemical reaction also gives the cake the right to coin the “velvet” title since it makes the cake light, moist, and fluffy with fine crumbs.

However, this reaction typically does not produce a strong red color in the cake that we typically associate with Red Velvet, but it makes a strong case that Red Velvet cakes/cupcakes must include an acid and coco powder in it’s recipe to be considered Red Velvet. So why does the modern Red Velvet include red food coloring? Well…

During the Great Depression, The Adams Extract Company decided to make their signature Red Velvet Cake recipe, with exorbitant amounts of red food coloring, an incentive for housewives across America to buy more food coloring. Because in order to make your red velvet redder than the Jones’ next door you needed to add red food coloring! Right?! Some cheaper/smarter people even started to include beet juice to make the red velvet redder! Thus Red Velvet Cake began to be associated more with its’ “red-ness” rather than its rich coco and brown sugar taste.

Typically Red Velvet cakes are topped with cream cheese frosting, but during the early days Red Velvet cakes were frosted with a French-style butter roux icing. So long as it is tasty, light and fluffy it doesn’t really matter what you choose to top it with… here at Cupcake Correspondents we prefer cream cheese frosting.

Now go forth and eat a Red Velvet cupcake! You even have some interesting facts to share with friends at the “cupcake table!” But let cupcakeries the world over take note… the Red Velvet Cupcake has a complex history BUT it is a simple classic so long as the basic ingredients are all there.

Let us all eat Cupcakes!

CarrotCake

Blogger @ Cupcake Correspondents