Categories: Beauty

Little Known Facts About Red Velvet Cake

All of you that love Red Velvet Cake, raise your hands. Now that I’ve seen all of your hands go up in the air, let me tell you about some little known facts about Red Velvet Cake you’re sure to find interesting!

Red Velvet Cake History
Because the ingredients were expensive to buy, cake itself was considered to be a rich man’s food in early America. After the American Industrial Revolution took place between the years of 1780 and 1860, baking ingredients were easier to come by and made more affordable for the common folk. At that time, cake became more of a common dessert rather than a delicacy afforded only by the well-to-do.

A little known fact about Red Velvet Cake is, in the 1920’s, the prestigious Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York put this much sought-after taste treat on its menu. Legend has it, the cake actually originated in the hotel’s kitchen. There have since emerged many variations to the recipe.

According to livejournal.com, the “Waldorf-Astoria Red Velvet Cake” recipe that’s been passed around since the 1950’s, contains shortening, white sugar, eggs, vanilla flavoring, butter flavoring, red food coloring, cocoa, sifted cake flour, buttermilk, salt, vinegar and soda. The frosting recipe calls for cooking flour, salt, milk, shortening, white sugar, vanilla flavoring and butter flavoring.

Remember the tale that was circulated about the chocolate chip cookie recipe from Neiman-Marcus that cost an adoring diner two hundred and forty bucks? That same folk tale has been told about the recipe for the Red Velvet Cake. Except “cake” was substituted for “cookie”, it supposedly happened at the Astoria-Waldorf instead of at Neiman-Marcus, and the price was reduced to a hundred dollars for the cake recipe.

Red Food Coloring
As I stated, there are many variations to the Red Velvet Cake recipe. Some recipes contain cocoa, while others do not. Some recipes call for cream cheese frosting while others use a creamy white frosting. No matter which recipe you choose, you’re going to be instructed to add one or two, one-ounce bottles of red food coloring to the batter. (Of course, the cakes which contain two ounces of food coloring are going to be the reddest.)

A little known fact about Red Velvet Cake is, if you eat very much of it, you could be risking your health. There has been plenty of press coverage about the health hazards of red food dyes. It’s been thought to cause cancer. According to Katherine M’s article titled “Is the Red 40 Food Dye Additive Having a Negative Impact on Your Child?” , “Red #3 and Red #40 are the two food coloring additives approved for use in food (by the FDA) yet if they were sprayed on weeds they would work as a pesticide.” Some people- especially children- are sensitive to red food coloring. Ingesting it causes their skin to break out into a rash.

Bake This Cake in A Flash!
A little known fact about Red Velvet Cake is that baking giant Duncan Hines came up with a “Moist Deluxe Red Velvet Cake Mix”. Now, you can whip up one of these multi-ingredient, time-consuming cakes in no time at all! Just top it off with a can of butter cream whipped frosting.

You can’t find this cake mix just anywhere, but stores like Target and Amazon.com carry it. And yes, this Red Velvet Cake mix does contain Red 40 food coloring.

Just to show how popular Red Velvet Cake really is, you can order a ready-to-eat cake from Swiss Colony during the holidays and also from Hickory Farms!

In the Movies
A little known fact about Red Velvet cake is, if you saw the 1989 movie, Steel Magnolias, you would have seen this popular dessert. Except it was rather camouflaged. It was a groom’s cake baked in the shape of an armadillo. And, it was covered with gray frosting instead of white.

And, did you know that Jessica Simpson chose a multi-layered Red Velvet Cake when she married Nick Lachey in 2002?

A final little known fact about Red Velvet Cake is that singer/actress Majandra Delfino, who is best known for her role as “Maria” in Roswell, loves it so much that she named her company, “Red Velvet Cake Records.”