The Red Velvet Rose (or whatever Bundt pan you have to hand)

A single token photo...

As I was tipping an entire bottle of red food colouring into this cake, I did wonder if this was one of those recipes born out of desperation.  One of those "I don't have enough cocoa powder but everyone wants chocolate cake..." improvisations.  It turns out that red velvet cake was the result of a chemical reaction between ingredients in dodgy chocolate, cocoa powder and baking soda.  Up until now, I thought that if I searched long enough I could find at least one single article on the internet to corroborate any hair brained thought I might have.   Apparently the internet is not aligned to my hair brained thoughts...

This cake nearly didn't get made.  This week has seen too many baked products exit the oven.  On Friday night I made the French Orange Cream Tart.  On Sunday I made the French Orange Cream Tart again.  The little boys turn four tomorrow, so I have made two cakes for their birthday.  Were it not for the fact that the Red Velvet eats into the vast amount of egg white generated by two French Orange Cream Tarts, it would still be languishing in the pile of unbaked guilt.   So on Monday night, after the blogging deadline, fuelled by obligation and surplus egg white, I pulled this cake together whilst making dinner.

This is absolutely quick and easy.  The scariest thing is extracting it from the bundt tin.  I didn't take any photos of the baking process, there wasn't really the time to even find the camera, let alone take photos.  Although don't let the quick and easy classification lull you into thinking there won't be a pile of dishes awaiting you once it makes its way into the oven.  My mother and Chris will tell you that whilst the food that churns out of my kitchen is okay, it probably isn't worth all the dishes...  Even with a dishwasher.  That either says a lot about the quality of my cooking or the aversion to being my sous chef.

Happy to say that even if you are Pam free, the heritage bundt will release the goods if greased with butter and flour the old fashioned way.

I took this cake to work along with the White Chocolate Ganache as promoted by the Evil Cake Lady.  There were plenty of oohs and aahs about how pretty the cake was.  Amazement that I was able to carve it into such an amazing shape...

I went for the higher proportion of cocoa powder so the cake was more brown/red than red/brown.  For me this cake is neither here nor there.  Not chocolate, not vanilla.  The crumb and texture are amazing though, so I think I will try this recipe again without the cocoa and without the red colouring to see what kind of white cake we end up with...

There weren't loads of comments at work.  Clearly I am bringing too much cake into the office.  Chris really liked the sliver of cake that made it home.  But see early comment about bringing too much cake into the office.  The man is cake starved, so I think part of his enjoyment of the cake was that he actually got cake.  That is not a euphemism.  At least I don't think it is a euphemism.  Time to end this post.

I didn't make the Chocolate Oblivion, so the next thing up is the ice cream meringue sandwiches.  Definitely not taking those into the office.

N