Swap Shop: Red Velvet Cake, for real
BY SANDY THORN CLARK August 16, 2011 10:44AM
Red Velvet Cupcakes from Kiss My Bundy by Chrysta Wilson.
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Updated: May 9, 2012 9:41AM
If you love Bundt cakes - and who doesn't? - Chrysta Wilson's Kiss My Bundt cookbook (kissmybundtcookbook.com) offers 60 recipes for them. Lemonade Picnic Cake and Red Velvet Cake are perfect for C.B. of Chicago, who requested a lemonade-flavored cake, and M.L.P. of Gary, who wanted a recipe for from-scratch Red Velvet.
No recipe is requested more by Swap Shop readers than Red Velvet Cake. Wilson's is ultra-delicious, as close to the version I remember from my childhood as any I've tasted or baked.
"Some bakers merely add red dye to their vanilla or chocolate cakes and call it Red Velvet. This is not Red Velvet! Red Velvet should be a light cocoa cake, but it shouldn't taste overwhelmingly chocolatey," writes Wilson. Made correctly, the Red Velvet Cake should possess a hint of sourness and a moist, dense texture, she says.
Wilson, who lives in Los Angeles, makes her Red Velvet with Callebaut or Gerkens Holland cocoa powder, usually only sold online or through commercial distributors, but she also recommends Dutch-processed Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa, available in supermarkets.
Requests
My favorite birthday cake when I grew up was a from-scratch yellow and chocolate marble cake - it was sponge-like. Can you help with a similar recipe?
L.T., Chicago
Does a reader have a recipe for Moravian sugar cookies?
S.P., Winnetka
Please print a recipe for date-nut muffins.
T.R., Chicago
Send recipes and requests to: Swap Shop, Chicago Sun-Times, 350 N. Orleans St., 9th Floor, Chicago 60654 or by e-mail, swapshop@suntimes.com.
All mail must include a daytime telephone number. Sorry, requests can't be answered personally.
