Red velvet cake

I ate red velvet cake a fair amount as a kid, so it was a bit nostalgic to make one of my own for the first time. I used a random online recipe and the result was good but not great. My hunch is that it cooked a bit too long.

Following the recipe was easy enough. I used cake flour as recommended, and tried to be careful not to over-mix it. I skipped the optional hot coffee.

I baked the cake in two dark 9" pans. I initially put it in for 30 minutes, then added another 2 minutes when a toothpick still came out a bit wet. I am not usually a very good judge of when something is done in the oven, and I suspect those 2 minutes may have been a mistake.

After 10ish minutes of cooling, getting the cake out of the pans was easy thanks to generous greasing with butter and a parchment paper lining on the bottom.

Once it was fully cooled, I frosted the cake using the included cream cheese frosting recipe. I am not particularly skilled at spreading frosting beautifully, but I thought it turned out fine. I had about a cup of frosting left over. (Too much overly sweet frosting is my biggest complaint about many cakes. I’m interested in trying the less sweet ermine frosting alternative someday.)

The end result was a bit drier than I had hoped. (The recipe does claim to be the “ultimate moist” red velvet cake.) The edges were also a bit hard. Perhaps lighter-colored pans or simply less time in the oven would have produced a better result. We’ll see if I make it again sometime.