Red Velvet Cake is a soft, moist layered cake with a beautiful crimson color and cocoa flavor, topped with a soft and smooth cream cheese frosting. For similar flavors in a cookie form, try my Red Velvet Sugar Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting.
What is Red Velvet Cake?
Red Velvet Cakes have been around forever and started out with simple ingredients like cocoa, buttermilk, and vinegar. The red color was added later, resulting in the vibrant colors we see today. It is traditionally paired with cream cheese frosting like this recipe, but red velvet cake purists often prefer an ermine (what I call cake gravy) frosting.
Ingredients
Room Temperature Ingredients: Using room temperature ingredients, specifically mayonnaise, eggs, and buttermilk in this recipe, is important for the best results.
Cocoa Powder: Look for regular unsweetened cocoa powder for the cake. You could use Dutch-processed cocoa instead, but it could have a slightly different chocolate flavor.
Mayonnaise: Before you judge adding mayonnaise to this cake, try it! It prevents the cake from becoming dry and gives it a soft and moist texture. I recommend using full-fat mayonnaise, but you could use a light variety if that is all you have on hand. Or, make your own!
Buttermilk: Just like you can make your own mayonnaise to use, you can also make your own buttermilk if you don’t have any on hand.
Food Coloring: Red food coloring puts the ‘red’ in red velvet cake. Use as much or as little as you prefer. If using gel food coloring, you will not need as much as if using liquid coloring. And yes, you can leave it out; the cake will still be delicious (but look like a light chocolate cake).
What Does Red Velvet Cake Taste Like?
In most recipes, red velvet cake tastes like a chocolate cake. But it shouldn’t taste AS rich as a traditional chocolate cake because of the addition of buttermilk and vinegar, which cut into the richness of the cocoa. However, all of that depends on the quality and selection of the ingredients. You could use a special dark cocoa or apple cider vinegar or extra-rich vanilla which would all impact the flavor.
Can I Make this Cake Ahead of Time?
Yes! You can get both the cake and the frosting made a little bit in advance. The baked cakes can be cooled, wrapped in plastic wrap, and stored at room temperature overnight. The cream cheese frosting should be stored in the refrigerator.
How to Store Red Velvet Cake
Once this cake has been frosted, it should be stored in the refrigerator, and covered. It will last up to 5 days. You could also freeze the frosted cake for up to 3 months.
Red Velvet Cake
Ingredients
Cake
- 2 cups (250 g) all-purpose flour
- 2 cups (400 g) granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ⅓ cup (39 g) unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 cup (232 g) mayonnaise, room temperature
- 2 large eggs, room temperature
- 1 cup (245 g) buttermilk, room temperature
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 ounce red food coloring, more or less depending on how deep you want the color
- ½ cup hot water
- 1 teaspoon white distilled vinegar
Cream Cheese Frosting
- ½ cup (1 stick / 113 g) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 4 cups (500 g) confectioners' sugar
Instructions
Cake
- Preheat oven to 325°F. Spray 2, 9-inch round cake pans with nonstick cooking spray and line each with parchment paper. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, cocoa powder, and salt.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, eggs, buttermilk, vanilla, red food coloring, hot water, and vinegar.
- Slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, mixing until just combined.
- Divide the batter equally between the prepared pans. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out mostly clean. A few crumbs are what you want for a MOIST cake!
- Allow the cakes to cool for 10-15 minutes in the pans. Then, turn the cakes out onto a rack to cool completely. After the cakes have cooled completely, make the frosting.
Cream Cheese Frosting*
- To a large bowl, add the butter, cream cheese, and vanilla. Using a handheld mixer on medium speed, blend until the ingredients are fully incorporated and smooth.
- Add confectioners' sugar, one cup at a time, until the frosting is light and creamy.
- Cover the cooled cake in a thin layer of frosting, putting it between the layers and around the outside of the cake. Serve.
Video
Notes
Did you make this recipe?
Thank you for making my recipe! You took pictures, right? Well go ahead and post them on Instagram! Be sure to mention me @iambaker and use the hashtag #YouAreBaker.
Should there be salt? I found the batter too sweet and compared this recipe to others, and it has 33% more sugar. Salt might have mitigated that.
I too had flat cakes, not because they didn’t rise but the volume of batter wasn’t enough for 3 pans.
I love the ding dong cake and rhubarb cake recipes and highly recipes those instead.
Can this recipe make 1 10″ round?
I run out of my americolor soft gel color.
Which one will you tell me to use instead of this brand?? I really love it but here in Spain is very difficult to get. Any advise, lovely people??
Thanks to you all
Beautiful cake! Love this one!
This is the way cake should taste every single time in my opinion. Perfectly moist and delicious!! I have played around with a ton of red velvet recipes. This will be my forever go to.
OH. MY. GOODNESS. (Emphasis on goodness!) Moist and luscious (and can even be frozen after it’s frosted!!). I have found the perfect red velvet cake!! Thank you, Amanda!
YAY!! So glad you enjoyed it!!
Can you use cake flour instead of regular flour
If I used a 12” round how many times would I need to double the recipe ? Btw your recipe’s are delicious:) thanks for sharing
Just made this for a birthday, and making again for Yule!! It is AMAZING! So moist and rich! Everyone loved it! I will make more batter this time, as I used a full-size cake pan and it was a bit low in the pan!
Hi Amanda, I made this delicious cake this afternoon for my hubby’s 69th Birthday. This one turned out the absolute best and I’ve been making RVC’s since the 80’s❣️
I followed every advice you gave:Room temp ingredients and bake until toothpick comes out with crumbs on it. Excellent instructions that turned out to be exactly what I had been missing to do. The cake was super moist. I used a fresh container of baking powder too, and the cakes rose perfectly. The icing texture was exceptional and thick so that it swirled nicely on the cakes.I made a little more icing as my family loves icing and a lot of it.Thank you so much for sharing your recipes!