1 (May 4-17): Red Velvet

I had never before in my life had red velvet cake. It always seemed tawdry to me, the pastry equivalent of a maraschino cherry. But after reading "A Lesbian Appetite," a story from Dorothy Allison's book Trash, where Allison describes her sister making the cake for each of her new love interests, the cake began to have some appeal. For a while, I only thought about making Red Velvet cake. I looked a recipes, tried to bring it up in conversation, imagined a rainbow of velvet cakes: green velvet, orange velvet. But actually making a cake and just pouring a bottle of red dye into it? Be serious.

But red velvet stuck around in my mind, and I finally decided I did want to make it. But there's hardly an appropriate opportunity to make this scarlet letter of cakes. Every time I make a cake for my roommates, they demand chocolate. But I had only just made a chocolate cake a week or so ago, and summer fruit isn't yet in season, and I wasn't in the mood for something citrus. Red velvet cake had just a bit of chocolate in it, enough to ground the flavor and the color, but it's hardly a chocolate cake, and so it seemed perfect.

It also seems rather fitting beginning to my summer of cakes with a cake that reaches into my southern heritage; a cake that is, to me, unpretentious and homey, if a little bit tacky. And did I say tacky? The cake I chose to make called for six tablespoons of red dye instead of the two I was expecting. To be fair, the recipe was for a three layer cake and so, with only two cake pans, I made 2/3 of the recipe. Still, I'd only bought one bottle of dye, so I ended up using only half the required amount. It came out a murkier burgundy than I imagine the traditional (2-bottle) crimson would be.
But it was delicious. The cake itself was moist and crumbly and sweet and delectable, but the frosting was the real treat. It's a butter roux icing, which is totally new to me, made by cooking flour and milk until thick and then combining this mixture with creamed butter and sugar. I cut down on the butter and sugar—I made 3/4 of a recipe to account for the cake being only two layers, and I only used one cup each of butter and sugar as opposed to the 1 1/2 in the recipe. I had maybe a cup of frosting leftover.

As is often the case when you're baking without the aid of electric mixers, it didn't quite come together at the end, and had a bit of a grainy look. It didn't affect the way the icing spread or tasted, though, so I didn't worry too much about it. The frosting was creamy, creamy, not-too-sweet, and very forgiving. It had lots of body, almost like it was a mousse or had gelatin in it, and it stayed soft even when refrigerated. I've decided to make this frosting my normal frosting for cakes and cookies, it was so good.