Another Red Velvet Cake

Red Velvet Cake - More from Magnolia Bakery cookbook - September 19, 2009

My nieces came up for the weekend for my dad’s 70th birthday party. In what’s now becoming our tradition, they stay with me for a night and the rest of the time, they spend at my parents’ house. On “my” night, we get takeout from Krung Thai, my favorite Thai restaurant, and I make dessert. This night’s dessert was red velvet cake. I tried the recipe from the More From Magnolia Bakery cookbook. It turned out pretty well but I confess I like Diane’s recipe better. I also made the Creamy Vanilla Frosting that was in the Magnolia cookbook and it was good but I still prefer cream cheese frosting with red velvet cake. Overall, I’m not a big fan of frosting. Most frostings and icings are too sweet and I’m more about the cake than the frosting. I’d rather have just a tiny bit of frosting, only enough to hold the cake layers together. Some of my friends are the opposite and would rather have a ton of frosting than cake (shudder). I need to hang out more with those people because we’d never let a slice of cake go to waste – I can eat the cake and they can eat the frosting.

I don’t make layer cakes that often because it’s time consuming – not so much the mixing and baking part but the waiting for the cake layers to cool enough to frost. You always want cake layers to be completely cool or else your frosting will melt. I do have some cake recipes where you’re supposed to let the frosting melt over the warm cake – yum. It’s also almost inevitable that the outer edges of the cake layers are a tad dry in the time it took to get the center baked enough to take out. I tend to underbake my cakes just a trifle to avoid this but then sometimes the center comes out gummy. I know people recommend the Magi-Cake strips but they’ve only been marginally successful to me and sometimes not really worth the bother. But layer cakes do make a nice presentation and are very photogenic.