How I Developed The Perfect Chocolatey Red Velvet Cake

I spent the last two days making all these variations

of red velvet cake to end up with my dream version.

A big part of developing recipes is failure.

You figure out why you failed,

you try more things, and then succeed.

Today I'm going to show you

how I developed my perfect red velvet cake.

[dramatic music]

[voice rewinding]

I feel like red velvet was a big deal,

like in 2013-ish.

There was like red velvet air freshener and candles,

and I want to think of this as red velvet cake's redemption.

You know how when you eat marble cake,

and then you find yourself the perfect piece

with just the right amount of vanilla and chocolate.

It has this flavor that's a bit of both.

So I want my red velvet cake

to taste distinctly chocolatey without being overpowering.

I like to do my due diligence and research

and see what's out there,

and then I plot them all on like an Excel sheet.

I discovered that a lot of red velvet cake recipes

have barely any cocoa powder.

This is something I want to solve for.

I'm going into this with two recipes.

I want to see which one gives us the best texture.

The first one I'm going to do is using a one-bowl method.

This one is loosely based on my chocolate sheet cake.

Okay, those are my dry ingredients.

And then we're going to work wet ingredients,

but I'm going to start with a dry ingredient,

which is cocoa powder.

Cocoa powder is 14 grams,

because for my chocolate sheet cake it had about 30,

and I don't want this to be strictly chocolate cake.

I'm going to bloom this first with my hot water.

Some of the water soluble compounds break open

when you introduce hot water.

The thing about using oil is it's fluid at room temperature,

so it's going to keep the cake light and moist.

I'm going to use sour cream.

Gives you that lactic acid tang.

I need a teaspoon of vanilla bean paste.

One egg in here.

I'm using gel food color.

They're much more concentrated,

and you can get a nice color payoff.

So I'm actually going to go in a lower temperature

at 350 for like 10 minutes.

The second method is standard creaming.

Creaming method, on the other hand,

uses a more solid fat,

so in this case I'm going to use butter.

And in a departure from red velvet cakes,

I'm going to actually use melted chocolate

instead of cocoa powder,

so it can give you that melting quality on your tongue.

[oven beeping]

Ooh, color looks great, very vibrant.

Back to the creaming method.

You paddle the butter and sugar until it's nice and fluffy.

Then you introduce eggs.

Mix it enough for it to emulsify.

I am going to start adding

the wet and dry ingredients alternately.

Doing a little at a time will help it

incorporate without you working the mixture too much.

The texture looks really thick,

but also fluffy at the same time.

The cakes have been cooling, and,

things have happened.

The sides have collapsed in a little bit.

Maybe it was slightly under mixed.

I'm not evaluating for height.

The pan was a little too big,

so it's much thinner than what I would like.

You can see the difference in the crumb.

This, which is the one bowl method,

has like a more open crumb and bigger like bubbles.

It's supposed to be closed crumb,

and I think that's part of why it is called velvet,

because the crumb is supposed to be velvety.

This one, which is the standard creaming,

has a much tighter, more even crumb.

Based on first looks,

I'm leaning towards the standard creaming method.

I'm trying the one bowl.

Tastes like a nostalgic chocolate cake.

I think it's a little too chocolatey for me.

Let's try this one.

I really like the crumb on this one.

Mmm.

It melts away, very soft, very tender.

Maybe it's even a little too tender.

And that would explain also why it kinda sank on the sides.

Jesse.

Okay, don't.

Stop.

No, I'm just [indistinct].

We're not judging for visuals.

Okay.

We're just judging for taste.

Is this oil?

This is oil. And this is butter.

That's butter. Okay.

I'll eat the oil one first.

Okay, yeah, do that. I do like the structure.

This feels a lot different.

Yeah, Like it's hefty.

Yeah.

I feel like this has a slight structural issue.

Yeah, it's like dense, and-

Yeah. And it's a bit stodgy.

That's not the word I would use, but okay.

Okay. [laughing]

Have I offended you? I was like damp and melting.

You're like, It's stodgy, bitch. [laughing]

I could see this texture being really nice

if it just had more lift.

I think it needs more acid-

Mm. To activate the leavener.

What if I do brown sugar?

Yes. Instead of

the white sugar. 'Cause that would react too,

and it might give you more lift.

Yes.

Would you ever introduce a powder or no?

Baking powder. Like baking powder?

Instead of the soda?

Or a combo, to like help the reaction along.

Okay, I can do that And I do think go intense

on the red food coloring.

Okay. Like I wanna taste it.

People don't realize that it has a taste.

Oh yeah. It has like

a strange bitterness that-

Yeah, To me is red velvet.

Thanks, Jesse, very helpful.

It's good. [Shilpa clapping]

The next one I'm going to do

a brown sugar version of the creaming.

Everything is the same except I'm going to switch the sugar.

Brown sugar has molasses in it,

which makes it more acidic for the baking soda to react.

The second variation, I am going to switch up the leaveners.

I'm gonna do half a teaspoon baking soda

and half a teaspoon of baking powder.

I'm going to keep it 200 grams of white sugar.

For these variations of the standard creaming.

I'm just going to stick with doing the melted chocolate.

Each bowl also is going to get sour cream, salt,

vanilla, liquid food colors.

Since you have to use more liquid

to get the same payoff as gel,

it's going to introduce its own sort of flavor.

Not switching the butter.

This one is white sugar.

This is brown sugar.

Both my mixtures have been creaming,

and I think I'm ready to move on to the next step,

which is adding the eggs.

I wasn't as gentle with mixing it this time.

It's going to build a little bit more structure

and not sort of collapse in on itself.

In the meantime, I'm going to get started on my frosting.

One is like a cream cheese frosting

and one is something called an ermine frosting,

which many people believe

is like the traditional frosting for red velvet cake.

It's a very stable frosting.

When the temperature is hot outside

or you're transporting it far distance, it is very stable.

It starts with a base of flour and milk.

You bring it to a boil, cook it to a paste.

I feel good about this.

I am now going to add the sugar in here,

and it's going to thin it out.

Just to cool this down quickly

I'm going to get it on a sheet tray,

and it'll cool down faster for us.

[oven beeping]

Lovely.

[people yelling]

It was Kendra's birthday yesterday,

so we made a little surprise for her.

I made you, I made you- Crumbs.

Woo! Streusl-y bits.

You know I love the streusel topping.

I actually need to come back to work, so let me come back.

I'm a little concerned about the fact

that I can see them pushing in.

We can't do anything about this right now.

I'm going to let it cool.

While that is chilling,

I'm going to work on the standard cream cheese frosting.

Butter,

powdered sugar,

cream cheese,

vanilla, salt.

Okay, this is looking good.

Feels a bit loose.

I feel like this could benefit

from a little bit of chill time.

The base for the ermine frosting is cool enough.

Actually, it's pretty cool.

First step in finishing the ermine frosting

is I'm going to put the butter in the mixer

and get it paddled.

I'm gonna do half a teaspoon of salt

and a teaspoon of vanilla bean paste.

It is very dense.

It looks a little weird.

It is very pudding.

I don't know if it maybe needs more paddling time

or maybe slightly less flour.

Whoever would like to come and taste cake.

I can take thoughts.

It's 5:30, I need thoughts.

I much prefer baking powder. Okay.

The brown sugar just has a better flavor.

Yes. This one for me is like...

[Shilpa] The ermine?

It looks broken. Yeah.

It just feels like a total bummer.

Plus one to brown sugar. It's just a much rounder

sweetness to it.

But I think coupled with the cream cheese frosting,

which I prefer over the ermine.

Got it, got it.

It's a little sweet. Sure.

And also I wouldn't mind it being tangier.

Perhaps a higher proportion of cream cheese.

I'm also brown sugar. Kendra, what's your opinion?

It's so tender,

which to me makes it feel different than your average cake.

I love the point that you're making

about the role of the melted chocolate.

That's cool, and that's like,

feels like real like new information and thinking to me.

Yeah. But it feels like

it's sort of falling apart. Sure.

So are we that the cocoa powder would be a texture solve

rather than an intensity?

Because- Both.

Both. Both.

Let's have fun with it.

A murderous side-eye glare. [Shilpa laughing]

I love it.

Jesse and Chris had valuable feedback

in that it was a little,

almost a little too velvety.

So we're going to try to fix that

by introducing a little bit of cocoa powder.

Since cocoa powder is so absorbent,

it's probably going to open up the crumb a little bit more.

I'm not really decreasing the amount of chocolate.

I'm going to keep that the same.

The second thing I want to do,

I want to try to use unsweetened chocolate.

Let's see if taking out that extra sugar

that chocolate is bringing is going to

make the texture less damp.

Meanwhile, I'm going to get some dry ingredients going here.

Same as yesterday, but I'm using light brown sugar.

It won't color the batter that dark,

and the red color will punch through.

Yesterday we did something that's called standard creaming.

I put the butter, sugar, beat it together,

eggs, dry ingredients, alternate with wet.

With reverse creaming,

add all of my dry ingredients to the mixer bowl,

paddle it just to combine.

Then I'm going to add my butter.

Paddle that.

It sort of coats all of the proteins in the flour.

You can go in with liquid

and be aggressive to build structure.

So it makes a more tender cake.

I add the eggs in the very end,

because you want to beat them

to get some of their mechanical like leavening power,

but if you add it before,

we would over beat them and it become too airy.

All in all, I think it's much more streamlined processed

than a standard creaming.

Both these cakes have the same amount of chocolate.

One of them has cocoa powder

and the other has unsweetened chocolate.

For the cream cheese frosting,

I think I definitely want to try my cream cheese whip,

the one that I developed for my carrot sheet cake,

but I suspect that this is going to be

a little too light and fluffy, maybe.

The texture, mind blowing.

Whoop.

Very light.

Obviously it's nice, I developed it previously

and just published, so it has to be great.

And I also want to try one other cream cheese frosting,

similar to yesterday's that I made, but with less sugar.

Essentially I want to like make a whipped butter,

but I think where the change will be most significant

is I'm going to use much less sugar,

and hopefully it'll be more like tangy and creamy.

I feel like it's a little stiff,

so I'm going to add a splash of milk.

Let me begin with a tablespoon, and see where that gets us.

Oh yeah, it's become a lot lighter.

I'm gonna add another tablespoon.

Ai.

I don't know, should I do another tablespoon?

If I was a stronger person,

I would've just maybe do two full tablespoons.

Let's just do one more tablespoon.

Total of quarter cup of whole milk, at this point,

and it looks much, much better.

It is lighter, creamier.

I am going to fold it into this bowl

of softened cream cheese.

Taste is good.

I like the balance of the sugar to cream cheese.

[oven beeping] Okay, the timer

has gone on the cake for the like 16th time.

Hopefully I have it down right.

Looking lovely.

Let it cool.

This one is the unsweetened chocolate.

There's a weird dark spot over there in the center

that doesn't fill me with deep confidence.

Okay, and this one is cocoa powder,

74% chocolate.

Oh my god, that spot over there.

I think that's the worst part of recipe development,

when you feel like you're regressing instead of progressing,

that's discouraging.

When you're like, Oh, I feel like

I'm halfway there last night,

and now you make changes,

and you're like, Oh, I feel like maybe

that wasn't the right change.

Okay, it is time.

I have two cakes, two frostings, and I'm going to call Chris

and Jesse to come over and taste it.

[light jazzy music]

What's up? What's up with this?

It's like three different distinct sections.

It's like one of those like Italian like

kinda cookie cake things. Like a magic cake?

There are like fudgey bands on the top and bottom.

Not enough leavening, too moist.

It's just too dense and reading a little bit wet.

The flavor is nice.

The flavor's good. Yeah, the flavor's nice.

Let's taste the same as yesterday's brown sugar version,

but it has the addition of cocoa powder.

I think it's like too dense.

I don't like the flavor, bland almost.

I mean it feels like you have a structural problem,

I would say. Sure.

I agree that the unsweetened chocolate

just punches through just a little bit more.

Yeah. This is like fine.

Yeah. I would almost

not even know that it's chocolate.

Yeah, I think what we wanted for the cocoa powder to do,

like make it more intense, et cetera,

like almost the opposite happened.

[Speaker] Chris.

So that was the- Whipped cream cheese.

The whipped cream cheese? Yes.

Very light.

Almost like tastes like yogurt.

Yes. That like lightness.

It's really good,

it's just unexpected Too light?

Okay, got it.

Yeah, taste the experimental one.

[Chris] I think the flavor's better here.

It tastes like cheese in a good way.

Your experimental is much more aligned

with like what people

want and expect. Yeah.

It's like a better version of the classic,

whereas, this is something else.

They didn't need to.

You coulda just kept going with the one bowl.

No Christopher.

You had five minutes to be here.

I think you're five minutes are up.

My five minutes are up.

I know.

The flavor is better here,

but you still have a structure issue.

I agree, I agree. Okay.

Okay, thank you. Great.

It's all good.

Remember how yesterday when I added

the baking powder and it helped?

Yes. Maybe I do that.

Yeah. And it makes sense,

'cause chocolate's heavy.

There's a lotta- Yeah.

Heavy ingredients in here.

I think this can be like pleasantly dense

in like a very nice way,

if it's just like a tiny bit puffier.

Got it.

I love when you come and validate my choices. [laughing]

Unlike yesterday.

Okay, I'm gonna try that. [laughing]

No, I think it's a great idea.

Okay. Getting close.

Thank you, Jesse. [laughing] Yeah.

Sometimes life doesn't work out the way you want it to,

but that's okay.

We have solutions.

So this version of my red velvet cake,

I am going to keep everything same

as the 100% chocolate one,

but I'm going to do combination

of baking powder and baking soda,

and I'm still going to use the reverse creaming.

[light jazzy music]

Okay, 350 for 28 minutes.

Okay, the cake is done.

Interesting.

A few cracks,

but perhaps not as life-threatening as I think it is.

Let's let this cool,

because as we've noticed from all the different variations

that we've made, things change a lot as it cools.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go ahead

and make the next version of my frosting.

I'm trying to aim for a hybrid

of both the ones that I tested earlier.

So I want the airiness of the whipped

with the cream cheese forward flavor notes

of the experimental one.

I'm going to increase the sugar.

The previous whipped had 67 grams.

I'm just gonna go up to 100 grams in this one.

I'm going to change the amount of whipping cream that I add.

I'm going to cut it in half.

Looks lovely and creamy.

Certainly you can taste the cream cheese much more.

My one concern is that it's not as thick.

If anything, we can switch to powdered sugar,

because that's more absorbent,

and maybe I will run an experiment right now.

Okay, so I'm going to do same weight

as I did the granulated sugar.

This actually looks a little bit more promising.

Just as creamy and light, but seems a bit more stable

thanks to the powdered sugar.

The cake that I just baked,

the one with 100% chocolate

and baking powder and baking soda is ready.

I'm almost scared to cut into it,

because I really need this to work.

It's not fully cooled, but it's cool enough.

[Shilpa sighing]

Is there a slight bend?

Yes, maybe, but it's significantly less than previous,

and more importantly,

I think you can see the structure is much more airy

than the previous version.

I like the level of sweetness to it.

Personally, I like the texture.

I think it really is very velvety

without having that very damp texture

that the previous ones had.

That one had obvious banding

and an obvious level of squidge.

This one not so much.

It's much more airier and soft.

Let's evaluate the difference

between the one I made previously.

Whoa, that's significantly different.

Both have 100% chocolate.

The only difference is this one has just baking soda,

and this one has a combination

of baking soda and baking powder.

Look at the height difference.

Let's count this as a win.

I'm going to work with this.

I want to double it and put it in a nine by 13 pan.

I'm going to call it the Big Boi.

Big Boi with an i.

Sometimes when you double ingredients,

and when you put them in a different pan, things change.

Obviously you need to have a longer bake time, et cetera.

Okay, while the cake is baking,

I'm going to get Hana to come over

and taste the cream cheese frostings that we made.

This version with the granulated sugar-

Yeah. Is what

supermarket frostings wish they could be.

Okay.

This is powdered sugar.

Kind of think that the cream cheese tang

comes through- Yeah.

A little better here.

I don't know if it's because powdered sugar is so like fine

in that it absorbs everything- Like absorbs, yeah.

So much better, I'm not sure.

Yeah. For that alone,

[laughing] I feel like- [laughing] Okay.

This is the winner, the powdered sugar.

I can't wait to taste it all together.

[oven beeping] Timer has gone.

Yes. But thank you, Hana.

[indistinct] Okay, perfect timing.

I appreciate your notes. Go check on your cake.

Okay, looks really, really good.

So I'm going to put it off to the side and let it cool.

In the meantime, I'm still thinking about the frosting.

I kinda like the lightness of the whipped cream,

but then it's not really very stable.

I'm worried that if I use this on a slice of cake,

it's just going to come running down the sides.

I hate that.

This is the experimental one,

the one with just powdered sugar, butter, and cream cheese.

and now I'm almost like, why can't I just

combine the two, in a way,

and just make a cream cheese frosting,

but introduce some heavy cream into it to lighten it up?

And maybe that's the way to go.

We'll call it the hybrid. Hybrid.

Cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar,

salt, vanilla, and heavy cream

to lighten the whole thing up.

This might actually work.

Let's get this chilled.

Then we will evaluate in like maybe 10 minutes.

Cake is cool.

I'm gonna bring it in and we're gonna taste a piece.

Oh wow, okay, no banding, which was the issue

that we were having before.

Still has that same intensity of chocolate.

This is the one.

This looks good.

Very defined swoops.

And then you use a bunch of sprinkles.

I love doing a mixture of sprinkles,

because I think it's most dynamic.

It looks great, it looks cute.

Jesse.

Okay, this looks perfect.

[indistinct]

It's really good.

It's really good. Good.

It's like light but substantial.

Mm-hm.

And the whipped cream is also light, but substantial.

Flavor-wise, it really, you know, I think I really nailed

what I was trying to achieve,

which is a flavor of really good like marble cake,

where you get like a perfect bite

of the chocolate and vanilla.

It does taste like that. Yeah. [laughing]

Texture wise, I wanted something with a very fine,

tight crumb, and velvety.

We achieved that as well.

It like gives people exactly what they want,

but it's better.

Mm.

I think this is perfect.

I think you should be really happy.

Sometimes you need validation,

especially after a day like today and yesterday.

So when they come in and they're like, Oh, I like it,

and I'm like, Oh, okay, maybe it's actually really good.

It took me eight cakes and seven frostings,

but I feel like this Big Boi was worth it.

[people laughing]

As I gaze lovingly- [indistinct]

Yeah.