Red Velvet Cake: when the recipe was invented and whether the dessert has always had this color

Thanks to its gorgeous red hue, the Red Velvet cake is a favorite for celebrations at any time of the year. The spectacular hue adds chic and variety to the feast, and the taste of its cream cheese frosting makes it an irresistible dessert.

Eat This Not That tells us who and when came up with the recipe for this delicacy, why it was named that way, and whether the cakes have always been red .

According to pastry chef Melissa Walnock, this cake has not always been red. It started out as a simple "velvet cake". "It is said that velvet cake originated in the Victorian era and was considered an exquisite dessert. The velvet in the name was meant to describe the texture of the cake," she explained.

Apparently, chefs found that adding almond flour, cornstarch, or cocoa to a cake mix would soften the protein in the flour, resulting in a finer cake texture than cakes made solely from regular flour,

So, cocoa was not actually used in these recipes to make chocolate cake, it was actually used as an ingredient to change the texture.

At the time when velvet cake was gaining popularity, the dark chocolate devil's food cake was also on the rise. According to pastry chef Stella Parks, author of the cookbook BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts, it was in the early 1900s that the combination of both of these recipes created the "velvet cocoa cake."

The recipe gained popularity during the Great Depression because it called for cheap raw cocoa powder instead of chocolate bars (which were more expensive because they were made from cocoa butter, cocoa solids, and sugar). Later, when the recipe for velvet cake made its way to the southern states, buttermilk was added to the list of ingredients. When buttermilk was used in the recipe, something interesting started to happen.

The combination of sour buttermilk and raw cocoa powder with neutralizing baking soda accelerated a chemical reaction that released the natural reddish color of cocoa. So no, the cake wasn't the super bright red it is now thanks to food coloring, but it was more of a reddish-brown hue than the earthy, dark brown of a regular chocolate cake.

However, it is the Adams Extract Company from Texas that is credited with the true popularity of the red velvet cake you know and love. The company sold food coloring and flavor extracts, and it was one of the first to introduce tear-off recipe cards to encourage the use of its products.

Legend has it that after the company's owners ate a velvet cake at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, they were inspired to replicate the recipe using their own products. It was in the 1940s that Adams Extract printed a recipe for red velvet cake, which was a velvety cocoa cake with food coloring, and it gained popularity.

Now, some people now use red beet juice as a natural coloring agent to help make this cake a beautiful color.

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