A Red Velvet Disaster
This weekend I did a trial run of a red velvet cake. See, my friends sometimes have an odd sense of humor and you combine that with a love of themed parties and you end up with an evil party on 06-06-06. I thought a red velvet cake would be fun since it is red, but I had never made one before. I decided to use the chocolate one from Martha Stewart. It wasn’t hard until I came to the baking part.
As you can see, the cakes fell. And they fell hard. The center of them? Probably 1/4 inch thick if I’m lucky. There were many adjustments made so I do not know what the real cause of the fall was. Firstly, we had to use 7-in pans rather than the 8 that were called for as we only had one 8-in. That meant that not only were the layers a bit thicker but the baking time was questionable and that meant towards the end of the bake time I was opening and closing the oven every 5 minutes or so, not a great thing for the sturdiest of cakes. Secondly, this recipe did not have specific adjustments for altitude so I followed those set out by DH’s baking bible. But, this involved changing the amounts on many different ingredients - cutting back liquid (I split it between the water and the buttermilk), cutting back baking powder, increase oven temp by 25 degrees, etc. I also used Wilton’s paste food coloring rather than the bottles of liquid so your redness may vary.
We may give it another try this weekend, this time with the proper sized pans. I’m not sure what to do about the adjustments for altitude though. I don’t know if I will go ahead and give them a try one more time now that I’ll have a closer idea of the bake time, or if I’ll seek out another opinion on the adjustments for 5,000 ft.
It tasted really good anyway. The crumb was great, the chocolate was pretty subtle, but that allowed the cake to be really nice and red. The cream cheese frosting was light and fluffy and just the right amount of sweet. We served to some for fika this weekend (along with rugelach that DH made for the first time and had his own share of trouble with). They aren’t bakers (well, I’m not really either, which I was reminded off with this experience) but love baked things so they don’t mind things that don’t look as pretty as they should.
If you have a difinitive set of altitue adjustments for elevations around 5,000 ft I’m open to suggestions!
Well, I’m off now. I need to apologize in advance for not getting back to comments you all made yesterday. I will be out of the house the entire day as water aerobics is followed immediately by the baby shower which is followed by voice lessons (in fact, I may have to duck out of the shower early), etc. etc. I haven’t had such a crazy busy day in a loooong time. I’ll try get back to everyone this evening as well as make my usual blog rounds. I’ve been behind with the push to get the baby shower items completed and haven’t been commenting much, but I have been reading my entire blogroll. Oh, and Chris, I don’t know what it is but Blogger does not want me to comment on your blog, I’ve tried a few times in the past week without success… *sigh*
