Red Velvet Cake (of Urban Legend Fame)

"Here is the Red Velvet Cake recipe, given to me by Urban Legend Master Jan Harold Brunvand (yep, the guy who wrote the books; a friend of mine). It's also known as the "$500 cake" or "Waldorf-Astoria Cake" - recipe distributed since the 1950s (at least) by the Adams Extract company of Austin, TX. It's just one version of this folkloric dessert, and a good one."
 
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photo by masonhanna photo by masonhanna
photo by masonhanna
Ready In:
40mins
Ingredients:
19
Yields:
1 cake
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ingredients

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directions

  • Begin making the cake: cream shortening, sugar, eggs, flavors.
  • Make a paste of cocoa and food coloring, add to first mixture.
  • Alternately add flour and buttermilk.
  • Mix soda and vinegar in small bowl; add to batter; blend.
  • Bake in 3-9" or 10" pans for 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees; let cool completely
  • Make frosting: cook milk, flour, salt, until thick; stirring constantly; let cool.
  • Cream shortening and sugar very well; add flavors - combine with the first mixture; beat well.
  • Cover cake with frosting.
  • Tell legend while serving.
  • Reference: Brunvand, "The Vanishing Hitchhiker," NY: WW Norton, 1981, 154-160; more information coming in Brunvand,"The Brain Drain and other Timely Tales" Urbana: Univ of Ill Press, 1999.
  • The Adams products, of course, may be substituted if you do not live in Texas or nearby where they are sold.
  • Note from Julie: for St. Patrick's Day, substitute *green* food coloring and make Green Velvet Cake! Or during Halloween, mix red and yellow to make orange.

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Reviews

  1. this is the recipe my former mother-in-law used and it is wonderful. all our birthdays she made the "red cake" she was a blessing and so is this cake.
     
  2. This cake has always been a favorite in my household. I have been using this same recipe for years. It is easy to make, produces that dense but moist "from scratch" quality that everyone loves, and the frosting is perfect for the cake. I make 1 1/2 the recipe for the frosting because my family loves it so much (you must have lots between the layers). My daughter asks for it every year for her birthday and it was a favorite for her to take back to college with her when she came in on the weekends (she was the hit on campus).
     
  3. I like this recipe, but prefer it a bit more moist so I used my southern Grandma's cure for dry cakes and substituted the shortening for Wesson oil. Saved the day.
     
  4. Not bad, most people liked it but after following the directions to the tee, and putting the batter in the pans, I realized the directions for the cake recipe didn't include the salt, which was listed as an ingredient. So I guess I will throw it in with the other dry ingredients next time...
     
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Tweaks

  1. I like this recipe, but prefer it a bit more moist so I used my southern Grandma's cure for dry cakes and substituted the shortening for Wesson oil. Saved the day.
     

RECIPE SUBMITTED BY

<p>It's simply this: I love to cook! :) <br /><br />I've been hanging out on the internet since the early days and have collected loads of recipes. I've tried to keep the best of them (and often the more unusual) and look forward to sharing them with you, here. <br /><br />I am proud to say that I have several family members who are also on RecipeZaar! <br /><br />My husband, here as <a href=http://www.recipezaar.com/member/39857>Steingrim</a>, is an excellent cook. He rarely uses recipes, though, so often after he's made dinner I sit down at the computer and talk him through how he made the dishes so that I can get it down on paper. Some of these recipes are in his account, some of them in mine - he rarely uses his account, though, so we'll probably usually post them to mine in the future. <br /><br />My sister <a href=http://www.recipezaar.com/member/65957>Cathy is here as cxstitcher</a> and <a href=http://www.recipezaar.com/member/62727>my mom is Juliesmom</a> - say hi to them, eh? <br /><br />Our <a href=http://www.recipezaar.com/member/379862>friend Darrell is here as Uncle Dobo</a>, too! I've been typing in his recipes for him and entering them on R'Zaar. We're hoping that his sisters will soon show up with their own accounts, as well. :) <br /><br />I collect cookbooks (to slow myself down I've limited myself to purchasing them at thrift stores, although I occasionally buy an especially good one at full price), and - yes, I admit it - I love FoodTV. My favorite chefs on the Food Network are Alton Brown, Rachel Ray, Mario Batali, and Giada De Laurentiis. I'm not fond over fakey, over-enthusiastic performance chefs... Emeril drives me up the wall. I appreciate honesty. Of non-celebrity chefs, I've gotta say that that the greatest influences on my cooking have been my mother, Julia Child, and my cooking instructor Chef Gabriel Claycamp at Seattle's Culinary Communion. <br /><br />In the last couple of years I've been typing up all the recipes my grandparents and my mother collected over the years, and am posting them here. Some of them are quite nostalgic and are higher in fat and processed ingredients than recipes I normally collect, but it's really neat to see the different kinds of foods they were interested in... to see them either typewritten oh-so-carefully by my grandfather, in my grandmother's spidery handwriting, or - in some cases - written by my mother years ago in fountain pen ink. It's like time travel. <br /><br />Cooking peeve: food/cooking snobbery. <br /><br />Regarding my black and white icon (which may or may not be the one I'm currently using): it the sea-dragon tattoo that is on the inside of my right ankle. It's also my personal logo.</p>
 
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