Cake Madness - Day 24

Cake of the Day: Red Velvet "Chess" Cake

Red Velvet is not a type of cake that I eat often. Maybe because I don't live in the South, but it's just not very popular around here. So, I really had no idea how it was made and it required quite a bit of online research. As I started browsing possible recipes, I was a little disgusted with how much red food coloring was used in these cakes, 1 to 2 OUNCES . . .really?!? That's like pouring an entire bottle of vanilla extract into your cake (to get a rough idea of the amount) . . .to me, that seems a little gross. And for what? Just to get a red color because it's called "Red Velvet" cake. Originally, the reddish color came from the reaction of the cocoa powder with the acidic ingredients (buttermilk, etc.) but nowadays people have decided the color needs to be more pronounced . . .thus the overabundance of red dye. Well, I didn't want to do that, so I figured there had to be another way . . .there is :)

This is the recipe I found: All Natural Red Velvet Cake. I baked my "secret ingredient" the night before: three fresh beets! My husband was a little confused when I told him they were for a cake, but he knows I'm a scientist and like experiments, so he was okay with it. Though he did tell me "it looks like you killed somebody", when I cut the beets up and got their amazing red color all over everything . . . oops. Who needs food coloring when God has given us such amazing colors in nature to use instead; I was impressed.

I had the hardest time figuring out what
to use for the squares . . . it turns
 out chocolate wafer cookies worked
perfectly, I fit all 64 squares on the cake :) 

Even though I was really excited about this experiment, I was still rather unsure of how this cake would taste. Also, I'm getting really sick of washing dishes, and cake making is getting to be a chore. But I can't stop now, I'm almost done with this challenge! One thing that kept me motivated with this cake was the venue that I was taking it to, a "Saturday Morning Musicals" party with some of my favorite girls. We were planning on watching "Chess" and "Les Miserables", both awesome musicals, so I had been looking forward to this party for quite some time. I decided I should make a themed cake and a Chess cake seemed easier to make than a Les Mis cake, and here is the idea I used: Checkerboard Cake. I only had 2 square cake pans, so the bottom layer was actually a circle with the rounded edges cut off, but I put so much cream cheese frosting on it, no one could tell the difference :)

The chess set from the Dollar Tree completed the look

Red as can be, with no artificial dyes. Yay!

One side note: Blogspot lets me see where my "audience" for my blog is coming from, and a little while ago I noticed quite a few page views from Russia. Since Russia plays such an important role in "Chess" I thought it proper to give a shout out to my readers in Russia, whoever you are. Thanks for reading my blog, and feel free to leave comments! I'm so happy there are people all around the world who have taken an interest in my crazy experiments, it's really a good motivation for me to keep going. I've noticed readers from other countries as well, so THANK YOU :)