Seeing Red

"Seeing red" can be a good thing! And that's just what we wanted to see, when we sliced up our daughter-in-law's birthday cake this weekend: A beautiful, red velvet cake, with a light but still rich and creamy frosting.

But this time, I had made a few changes to the recipe I usually use (located at my recipe website). Having discovered that a bottle of grocery-store-quality red food coloring can get a bit pricy, and seeing as we make batch after batch of Red Velvet Frozen Yogurt at The New Deli, I hoped to find a more economical alternative. I discovered that a small, 1-ounce bottle of red food coloring paste (carried at Michael's Arts and Crafts) offered enough red food coloring for two cakes. All for only $1.95! (Liquid food coloring from the grocery store costs at least four times as much.)

Besides my food coloring discovery, I also realized that an extremely yummy cake could be made by making 50% more frosting. (No surprise there, right?) I made three eight-inch layer cakes and sliced each in half, ending up with six layers instead of the usual three or four. I've posted the slightly altered recipe here; when using less liquid (due to using the paste coloring and omitting the two ounces of food coloring), I add a bit more buttermilk. (To make the original recipe, using liquid food coloring, just go here.)