Very unique Red velvet quest

[fitcook]

I need a recipe for a red velvet ( or similar in taste) pie or VERY soft cake-almost like a pudding. I'm trying to create one, but I need the assistance of experts here to help me in this quest.
I've looked all over the internet, and can find recipes red velvet puddings with raspberries, this is not what I am looking for. I'm in search of the original thing red velvet- impact sour taste.
Aret there any alternatives? I looked into chcoolate buttermilk pies/etc, but they dont seem to have quite the same sourness to them.
PLEASE HELP, or please point me in the right direction.
Many thanks

[boar_d_laze]

I reread your post and see that you are asking for a pie and not a cake, and what I'd posted was nonsense.

Oops,
BDL

[phatch]

I've never heard of it as a pie or pudding. It's usually a chocolate cake with a false origin story. ( http://www.snopes.com/business/consumer/cookie.asp ) I suspect someone used the ideas of the cake in the pudding you had.

Phil

[fitcook]

Thank you so much for your replies.
So you think there is away to make a red velvet sponge cake? somehow to combine the flavors of the red velvet with the cream cheese frosting?

If you anyone has any additional recipes you may suggest , feel free to let me know.

[izbnso]

Let me take a stab at it…..

I’m aware of the myths and stories, and regional variations. So lets just all agree that red velvet is most often a cake with coco powder included (I hesitate to call it a chocolate cake because the red velvet recipes I have seen don’t call for as much coco powder as a bona fide chocolate cake) and enough red food coloring to kill a large bovine .
The red velvet cakes I have made all contain buttermilk, have that twangy taste and are traditionally iced with cream cheese icing. (I do a bourbon cream cheese icing and garnish with pecans)

So how to turn this into a pie?????
First off, I prefer tarts to pies, because removable bottom tart pans are my friend. Easier to serve and slice. But if pie you want, pie you shall have.

How about taking a buttermilk pie recipe (they abound on the net) adding in a touch of coco powder or ground chocolate and the 47 ounces of red food color. Maybe a chocolate crust, maybe not, possibly a nut crumb crust.
Bake that and cool.
Then instead of cream cheese icing, make a cream cheese butter cream and treat it kind of like a standard meringue topping and pipe it on. It should set up firm if you chill it, so that you can mound it on, yet still slice it clean when you are ready to serve.

[izbnso]

Geeze, I’m as bad as BDL . So buttermilk pie didn’t have enough twang….

Cut the sugar a little in the buttermilk pie and add some goat cheese to it as well. Nothing does twang like goat cheese.

[tessa]

the amount of red foodcolouring that goes in to this scares me silly
if you want it sour what about using some cranberry and less food colouring, so you still get the red and the zingy sour taste

now i could be talking through a hole out back as its not a cake we have here very often but im sure the cranberries would give great colour as well as flavour

[boar_d_laze]

I might as well give my stupid idea. I was thinking of pulling the poppy seeds and the lemon zest out of an oil/pudding lemon poppy-seed cake and adding a little cocoa, a handful of macerated frozen raspberries along with their juice and an ounce or two of red food coloring. Then, after baking and before frosting, soaking it with some liqueur.

I mean if you want gooey that falls between cake and pudding, that ought to do 'er. My feeling is that the citrus will give you more zip than buttermilk. FWIW, I'd consider orange zest and raspberry or orange liqueur because of the affinity orange and raspberry have for chocolate and eachother, and the affinity lemon has for raspberry. If you're not into scratch baking, you could even go with a Duncan Heinz cake mix and doctor it with the cocoa, zest, fruit, pudding, oil and liqueur. There are plenty of pudding/oil bundt cake recipes that can give you the right proportions for your doctoring. At any rate, you'll end up with something sufficiently cake-like to frost.

What my stupid idea isn't is a cream pie -- is that what you seek? If so, the place to start (duh) is with the custard. I suppose I'd try working with white chocolate, because you'll never get a cocoa flavored custard to look red. Puce maybe. Again, I'd eschew (gezundheit!) the buttermilk for other sources of sour. I've got raspberries and oranges on the brain. But whatever you like with chocolate is something you're going to like with chocolate.

Another idea is a cheesecake. "Red Velvet Cheesecake." Hmmm. Yep, that's what I'd do. Definitely. Again with the white chocolate -- which should let you get to red or reddish fairly easily. Add a little food coloring and some raspberry puree to the filling. Or even just swirl the puree through. Red Velvet Swirl Cheesecake. Garnish with raspberry sauce and whipped cream. Now we're talking. I'm getting hungry.

You know, red velvet cake got its color from the interaction of the acid (buttermilk and/or vinegar) used to potentiate the baking soda in old fashioned cake recipes with the cocoa they used in the pre-dutch-process days. If nothing else, this should let you know that the original red velvets were light (baking soda, remember) rather than rich. What did they know?

BDL

[tessa]

Originally Posted by boar_d_laze

I might as well give my stupid idea. I was thinking of pulling the poppy seeds and the lemon zest out of an oil/pudding lemon poppy-seed cake and adding a little cocoa, a handful of macerated frozen raspberries along with their juice and an ounce or two of red food coloring. Then, after baking and before frosting, soaking it with some liqueur.

I mean if you want gooey that falls between cake and pudding, that ought to do 'er. My feeling is that the citrus will give you more zip than buttermilk. FWIW, I'd consider orange zest and raspberry or orange liqueur because of the affinity orange and raspberry have for chocolate, and the affinity lemon has for orange and rasp has for both raspberry and chocolate. If you're not into scratch baking, you could even go with a Duncan Heinz cake mix and doctor it with the cocoa, zest, fruit, pudding, oil and liqueur. There are plenty of pudding/oil bundt cake recipes that can give you the right proportions for your doctoring. At any rate, you'll end up with something sufficiently cake-like to frost.

What my stupid idea isn't is a cream pie -- is that what you seek? If so, the place to start (duh) is with the custard. I suppose I'd try working with white chocolate, because you'll never get a cocoa flavored custard to look red. Puce maybe. Again, I'd eschew (gezundheit!) the buttermilk for other sources of sour. I've got raspberries and oranges on the brain. But whatever you like with chocolate is something you're going to like with chocolate.

Another idea is a cheesecake. "Red Velvet Cheesecake." Hmmm. Yep, that's what I'd do.

You know, red velvet cake got its color from the interaction of the acid (buttermilk and/or vinegar) used to potentiate the baking soda in old fashioned cake recipes with the cocoa they used in the pre-dutch-process days. If nothing else, this should let you know that the original red velvets were light (baking soda, remember) rather than rich.

BDL

just a question BDL why does it have so much red colour in it, whats the reasoning behind that and surely it must change the taste horribly
and didnt the original author say something about raspberries?... so if they didnt use raspberries what about red currants

[boar_d_laze]

It has red color because it always had red color. The recipe probably originated in the American south, in the days before baking powder and dutch-process chocolate. As I said, the interaction of the acid used to potentiate the bicarb used for leavening, with the old fashioned cocoa resulted in a red cake.

So, red velvet cake is red.

Old fashioned food coloring had a less unpleasant taste than modern dyes. It would kill you yes. But it tasted fine. They had their priorities straight, back then. So, post dutch-process but still old fashioned recipes have a lot of coloring. to take care of the aforesaid dutch-process cocoa.

Now we've got safe food coloring and dutch process cocoa, which leaves us stuck in a bit of a bind. Face it, fruit juice isn't going to wrestle cocoa to the mat. The best you're going to get out of it is something unpleasant looking. Your true Southern cook would never let a little thing like the nasty taste of two ounces of food coloring get in her way when she could mask it with a ton of frosting. However, we appear to be looking at something that won't support a lot of delicious now with zero transfat Crisco based frosting. That's why I suggested moving away from cocoa to white chocolate. Different flavor -- but red velvet is hardly intensely chocolate anyway.

BDL

[izbnso]

Tessa,
47 ounces was a joke, but it does take a lot of red food coloring.
BDL is right the red velvet cake probably originated in the American South. However, there is some debate on that. There is even some debate as to the color ever coming from the chemical reaction at all. We need to find us a chemist to be for sure.

As a true Belle of the South (I actually owned and wore regularly a hoop skirt at one time) , I can tell you that food coloring has long been used for strange purposes in Dixie. I have no idea why, no one has ever been able to give me a good answer.

However, I vividly recall my maternal grandmother working hard on a from scratch pound cake (she didn’t have an electric mixer until the 1980’s) only to add in an entire bottle of liquid yellow food coloring to the batter as her signature touch. Key lime pies from certain regions are electric green and many a lady used to use various shades of food coloring to zip up their preserves (both sweet and savory).

We is what we is down here (or up here in Tessa’s case).

I thought about the cheese cake version myself, but that would put the cream cheese in it, not on it.
I have never, ever seen fruit used in a red velvet cake. Never heard of it either. That would make it borderline healthy, for goodness sake.
Trust me Boar D Laze, you can get that custard red enough. If you are willing to use one of the larger bottles of Wilton No Taste Red gel food coloring. Disgusting, but true. Keep in mind that the color of red velvet cake isn’t primary red, it is deep blood red. (Remember the groom’s cake in Steel Magnolias that was red velvet and shaped like an armadillo.)
Just so we’re all clear, I hate red velvet cake. But I have made umpteen million of them for clients, and I never could get them to understand that food coloring was really the only thing that made it “special”.
Two of the “classic” Southern “fancy” cakes that I am always called upon to make are red velvet and caramel cake. I’m told mine are excellent, but I am no fan of either variety.
Shameless plug alert: Read the review on A Love Affair With Southern Cooking in the cook book reviews section of the forum, and use the link to Amazon if you want to buy it. It really is a very insightful book on Southern Cooking. It isn’t the end all be all, Southern cooking is too diverse, but it is rather good.

[tessa]

yeah i know you dont put that size bottle red colouring its at least a 46.6 oz right
i have seen lots of different recipes for it and seen it on tv , i think paula deen made it once, and i have actually seen it in real life , but when i read the recipes it was making me gag seeing how much food colouring was going in , i make cakes myself so know about how the food colour works and coming from a place where food colouring generally isnt used in the actual cakes so much, i just cant imagine how much it must change the taste and scare the bejeebies out of a person when they have to go to the bathroom the next day

[boar_d_laze]

Originally Posted by izbnso

Tessa,
47 ounces was a joke, but it does take a lot of red food coloring.
BDL is right the red velvet cake probably originated in the American South. However, there is some debate on that.

Yep

There is even some debate as to the color ever coming from the chemical reaction at all. We need to find us a chemist to be for sure.

Trust me.

As a true Belle of the South (I actually owned and wore regularly a hoop skirt at one time) , I can tell you that food coloring has long been used for strange purposes in Dixie. I have no idea why, no one has ever been able to give me a good answer.

However, I vividly recall my maternal grandmother working hard on a from scratch pound cake (she didn’t have an electric mixer until the 1980’s) only to add in an entire bottle of liquid yellow food coloring to the batter as her signature touch. Key lime pies from certain regions are electric green and many a lady used to use various shades of food coloring to zip up their preserves (both sweet and savory).

We is what we is down here (or up here in Tessa’s case).

I thought about the cheese cake version myself, but that would put the cream cheese in it, not on it.

True, but why not? She wanted a puddingish thing. To me that means custard. And is there a better custard than cheesecake? I think not.

I have never, ever seen fruit used in a red velvet cake. Never heard of it either. That would make it borderline healthy, for goodness sake.

I know. That's a problem for sure. I'm still trying to get the red in it. But it's not my fault. she brought up raspberries first.

Trust me Boar D Laze, you can get that custard red enough. If you are willing to use one of the larger bottles of Wilton No Taste Red gel food coloring. Disgusting, but true. Keep in mind that the color of red velvet cake isn’t primary red, it is deep blood red. (Remember the groom’s cake in Steel Magnolias that was red velvet and shaped like an armadillo.)

Just so we’re all clear, I hate red velvet cake. But I have made umpteen million of them for clients, and I never could get them to understand that food coloring was really the only thing that made it “special”.

I hate it too, if it's any consolation. However, a white chocolate/ raspberry swirl cheesecake is something I can live with.

Two of the “classic” Southern “fancy” cakes that I am always called upon to make are red velvet and caramel cake. I’m told mine are excellent, but I am no fan of either variety.

Shameless plug alert: Read the review on A Love Affair With Southern Cooking in the cook book reviews section of the forum, and use the link to Amazon if you want to buy it. It really is a very insightful book on Southern Cooking. It isn’t the end all be all, Southern cooking is too diverse, but it is rather good.

You bet,
BDL

[boar_d_laze]

How the fonts? How?

BDL

[phatch]

If you've got orange and chocolate on the brain, use some naranja agria. That should be sour enough.

And the bitter with the chocolate should be good too.

pHil