Red Velvet Marble Cake Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Why add white vinegar to red velvet cake? ›

White Vinegar: It sounds like a strange ingredient in a cake, but it is essential in a red velvet cake. This recipe calls for baking soda to leaven the cake (make the cake rise). The small amount of added vinegar allows the soda to do its best work.

It contains cocoa but not the same quantity as traditional chocolate cake, resulting in a more subtle cocoa flavor and tanginess due to the buttermilk and vinegar. Its uniqueness is a harmonious blend that sets it apart from other cakes.

Cocoa powder contains an antioxidant called anthocyanin, which is pH-sensitive, meaning it reacts to acids and bases. When raw cocoa powder reacts with acidic ingredients such as buttermilk and vinegar, it turns dark red.

While Chocolate Cake is made primarily with cocoa powder and sometimes melted chocolate, Red Velvet Cake is made with a small amount of cocoa powder, but is also known for its signature bright red color, which is usually achieved by adding red food coloring to the batter.

If you want to skip the acidic liquid altogether, you can substitute a tablespoon of baking powder for each teaspoon of baking soda. Then add water equal to the amount of vinegar you omitted. This won't be chemically identical, but most people won't detect a difference.

Key Components. Bicarbonate of soda works by reacting to acid in the recipe – the rising comes from the mix of bicarbonate, buttermilk and vinegar. I always use a white vinegar for my red velvet cupcakes, but others can work such as apple cider vinegar.

Devil's food cake typically has coffee, sour cream, or water in the batter. While red velvet cake has tangier flavored liquids like buttermilk or vinegar. The different liquids also mean that Devil's food cakes have more moisture, which results in a more tender cake than red velvet.

The flavor of blue velvet cake is the same as a red velvet cake—fluffy vanilla cake with a hint of chocolate slathered in tangy cream cheese frosting. It is easy to make a blue velvet cake from scratch with a blend of cocoa powder, vinegar, buttermilk, and bright blue food coloring.

Red velvet cake may also have roots in black foodways and is sometimes considered to be soul food in the South. The color red is often used in Juneteenth celebrations to symbolize bloodshed in the fight against slavery.

Some ways to do this is by substituting baking powder in place of baking soda, using a natural non-alkalized cocoa powder, adding more white vinegar or buttermilk to your red velvet recipe, to achieve a bright red color.

What is the red 40 in red velvet cake? ›

Many years ago, the red color came from the presence of vinegar and buttermilk reacting with the anthocyanins in traditional cocoa powder. But for most of the last few decades, the red color has been supplied by Red #40 dye, in part because cocoa powder used now is alkalized to neutralize its acidity.

The Best Cocoa for Red Velvet Cake Is Natural Cocoa

The results are an almost melt-in-your-mouth tender cake. Natural cocoa is also lighter in color, making the red velvet cake more vibrant. Natural cocoa also has the most chocolate flavor a cocoa powder can have because it is less processed.

The main ingredients in red velvet cake are not good for dogs, including chocolate, wheat flour, and sugar. In particular, chocolate is toxic to dogs because it contains methylxanthines like caffeine and theobromine, which dogs cannot break down as we can. Chocolate poisoning can cause severe symptoms and even death.

The Ingredient That Makes Red Velvet And Pink Velvet Cake Different. Red velvet cake traditionally includes a small amount of cocoa powder, giving it a lightly chocolatey flavor. Pink velvet cake, on the other hand, includes no cocoa powder, so it has a classic yellow cake flavor, with warm vanilla notes.

Due to the fact that it uses cocoa powder rather than chocolate, red velvet cake is more subtle in chocolate flavor than a chocolate cake. In terms of the cocoa flavor concentration, we like to think of red velvet cake as somewhere between a vanilla/white cake and a chocolate cake.

Vinegar helps with the rise of our baked goods

When vinegar reacts with baking soda, it creates carbon dioxide bubbles, which act as leavening agents. So as the batter bakes, these tiny bubbles expand, causing the cake to rise and giving it that light, airy texture we all love.

Ideally, you'd use another type of vinegar to replace ACV as they also contain acetic acid. White vinegar makes a great replacement for apple cider vinegar as it has a neutral flavour profile. This means it shouldn't affect the flavour of your final bake, compared to if you'd used ACV.

The recipe calls for 2 teaspoons of baking soda to 1 tablespoon of vinegar. Boiling water is added to kickstart the leavening reaction and the batter started foaming up nicely upon mixing.

Natural preservatives are additives that slow the growth of spoilage organisms like mold or bacteria in baked goods. They also function to limit changes in color, texture and flavor. As well as being effective, the consumer expects them to be derived from natural sources, such as: Vinegar.