Red velvet cake isn't red!

[wintersdawn]

Used red food colouring but it's no where near a red colour, just looks like an off colour chocolate cake, far to light. Tastes great though, any tips on getting the right colour?

Use a really good quality gel or paste red rather than liquid?

I'm puzzled. I know that this is how you make red velvet cake, but why does anyone want to make a chocolate cake red? It's just unnecessary. Gel colours are much more effective.

It was something I'd never tried before and thought I'd try, have to say I'm perfectly happy with it just being chocolate :-)

I made some last year , and it took a lot of red paste colour nearly half a pot, they did look lovely tho and were gorgeous dark red, also put cream cheese frosting on top, yum yum yum.

If you used food colouring check that the main ingredient isn't beetroot (to give it the red colour). This is great for colouring icing and when added to cake mix gives a good red colour.......until you bake it then the colour disappears. As said above a gel or paste is better and will keep its colour after baking

You need 'bake stable' colouring as I found out to my cost when I made a hidden heart cake with Sainsbury own brand liquid colouring - the red came out a muddy brown.

I wouldn't bother personally. To me even bought red velvet has an odd taste, I can taste the colouring. It's also not really a chocolate cake despite having cocoa in it, it's sort of vanilla with a bit of cocoa. Chocolate cake is much nicer.

Proper red velvet cake is made with white vinegar which reacts with the chocolate to give it it's red colour, not food colouring. I can't remember exactly how to do it though. .. been ages since I worked in restaurants!

I've come to the conclusion that Red Velvet cake is one of those cakes that sounds way better than it tastes. After hankering after one for ages, I had a Red Velvet whoopie Pie from the Hummingbird Bakery last weekend and it was like eating a sponge cricket ball.

I had this problem too. I was making red velvet whoopie pies but I ended up just leaving them chocolate colored. No one complained

Fairy do you have a recipe for that? All RV cakes I've made have been basically:

• Butter, sugar, eggs,
• cocoa powder, red colouring and vanilla into a paste, add to butter mix
• alternate adding flour and buttermilk
• white vinegar and bicarbonate as the raising agent, added right before baking

So the mix is already red before adding vinegar.

Would be v interested to try without colouring!! :)

I've discovered a lorann product called red velvet emulsion. It's meant to be a colouring and flavouring, but I still used vanilla and my usual recipe and just used this instead of colouring. It was fairly red (can't really tell from photo) and tastes better than any other red velvet I've baked or tried, but I still don't like it...