Red Velvet Cake

Food colorings and additives are bad news, but  I made an exception and baked a red velvet cake. I'm still conflicted about pouring an entire bottle of food coloring into a cake, but you eat with your eyes first and the warmth from the maroon color of this cake is unbeatable. An especially festive birthday cake, I love how the brilliantly colored, moist cake is tucked inside a veil of snowy cream cheese frosting. I baked this particular cake for a birthday and used Ghirardelli chocolate chips to trim the cake.

I chose the following recipe for the following reasons.
1- It was one of the few recipes that only used one bottle of red food coloring. One bottle is more than enough to color the cake and cover your kitchen with red batter splatters.
2- It calls for the most cocoa. Now, this cake is supposed to be a chocolate cake with a red hue, not the other way around. The other recipes I considered only required a few tablespoons of cocoa and that is not nearly enough cocoa for a chocolate cake by any stretch of the imagniation. The combination of more cocoa and less food coloring imparts this cake with a deeper red hue than the neon red glow seen otherwise.

I made the following adjustments. First, I used three 8 inch cake pans which shortened the baking time to 28-29 minutes. Additionally, I used my own cream cheese frosting recipe since I prefer a less sweet frosting that allows you to enjoy a bit of cream cheese tang.

Cream Cheese Frosting:
1 8 ounce package of cream cheese (chilled)
1 stick of butter (room temperature)
~1/2 a box of powdered sugar (to taste)

Beat the butter and cream cheese together until fully mixed and fluffy. Gradually add powdered sugar to taste.