Red velvet is one of our all-time favorite flavors, be it cake, cupcake, or whoopie pie. But we always cringe a little when we pull out that bottle of red food coloring, mostly because it feels like cheating. There's got to be a more natural product we could use, don't you think? First up, pomegranate juice!
Pomegranate juice is powerful stuff, capable of dying our hands for days and ruining a nice shirt with a few splatters. We love it's deep red color and figured it would be a good place to start with our all-natural red velvet experiments.
After reading through the comments from this post on why Sarah Rae's pomegranate cheesecake didn't turn pink, we decided on a strategy. First, we reduced one cup (8 ounces) of pomegranate juice down to 1/4 cup. At this point, it was thick, syrupy, and deep deep red. We hoped that this concentrated juice would dye the batter more effectively than juice straight from the bottle.
A few comments also suggested that acidic batters would help retain the red color, which we verified in our trusty copy of On Food and Cooking. Between the buttermilk and the white vinegar, we figured we had our bases covered on this front!
But, here's where the trouble (and disappointment started). We mixed one and a half tablespoons of pomegranate concentrate into the buttermilk and vinegar. It turned light pink, and we knew that wouldn't cut it. We mixed in another tablespoon and...it was still pink. A lovely lavender-esque shade of pink, but pink none the less!
We didn't want to risk adding much more liquid to the recipe, so we decided to stop there and hope that mixing it with the cocoa powder would deepen the color toward red.
Unfortunately, the mixed batter turned out just as light and brownish-pink as we'd feared. The color darkened somewhat in the oven, but the resulting cupcakes were definitely dull brown and not at all red. At least they were still delicious with their crown of cream cheese frosting!
So pomegranate juice seems to be out. We could try concentrating it further or using more of it, but we fear that we'd still have to use an awful lot of it before we saw any significant color change. And at that point, the flavor would start to be affected.
Next time we'll experiment with beet juice. We've read that this is what was used before commercial food coloring became available. We suspect that the cake will still be more brown than red, but it's worth a try!
Do you have any suggestions or advice?
Related: Recipe Review: Red Velvet Cupcakes from Simply Recipes
(Images: Emma Christensen)
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My husband absolutely insists that he once had red velvet cake that was colored with currants - I've never been able to find anything online to verify its existence, but maybe that's something else to try?
The red color of the red velvet cupcake was due to the chemical reaction between the unprocessed light cocoa powder and the acid in the recipe...AT had a red velvet roundup for v-day that included alternative to the food coloring in this link:
http://bestcupcakerecipes.blogspot.com/2009/02/red-velvet-cupcake-recipe.html
Just ate a roasted beet and my fingers are stained.
Roasting seems to intensify the color.
Will try pureeing a bit into cake batter someday.
My immediate thought was beets. I find them to be way more intense than pomegranate.
Yes, I think beets are the "old fashioned" way to make red velvet.
Yes, I believe that MissKatieMay is on to something worth trying out. Currants, rehydrated in the pomegranate juice and buzzed up in the blender might be worth experimenting. This would add some solid pigment to the pomegranate juice and as a slurry, it may be possible to add more without having too much liquid.
Anxious to see how the beet juice works also. Also I believe that there is a beet root powder.
Another consideration might be the pH of the batter. If too alkaline [from the leavening agents] the organic pigments can loose their redness - might be helpful to drop the pH [more acidic] with some lemon juice or citric acid - the stuff that is used in canning fruit to add acid and preserve color.
Yep, beets. Avoids using a bottle of food coloring and it comes out nicely pink. You can help the color along with a tiny bit of food coloring if needed. Here's the recipe:
CAKE
1 cup butter (room temperature)
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
Approx 1/2 cup beets finely shredded (I used canned beets)
1 Tbs water
1 tsp liquid red food coloring (optional- cake will still be pinkish if you omit food coloring)
1 tsp vanilla
1 Tbs vinegar (I used white wine vinegar)
2 1/3 cup cake flour (I used pastry flour, all-purpose would do the trick but it won't turn out exactly the same)
2 Tbs cocoa powder (optional - I did not use cocoa)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt (Omit if your beets are canned with salt)
Using beaters, cream butter and sugar together in a large bowl (cutting butter into chunks first makes this step easier). Add eggs and buttermilk, beat on low until combined. Add beets, water, food coloring, vanilla, and vinegar. Beat until combined (first stirring with a rubber spatula reduces mess).
Whisk flour, baking soda, and salt together. Add half the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, mix with spatula until mostly combined. Add remaining flour mixture, mix with spatula until mostly combined, then beat on medium-high speed until smooth (takes a few minutes). Scrape batter away from the sides of the bowl every once in a while.
Grease bottom and sides of cake pans (I used cooking spray), divide batter evenly.
Bake two 9" rounds in an oven pre-heated to 350 for 25 minutes, or two 8" layers for 30 minutes. Cake is done when knife or toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. This is a fragile cake and will fall apart easily- careful when you remove from pan.
FROSTING
5 Tbsp flour
1 cup milk
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 Tbsp vanilla
Cook flour and milk until thick, whisking constantly. Take off heat and lay plastic wrap over the surface to prevent a skin from forming; cool in refrigerator. Cream together sugar and butter. Add cooled flour mixture and vanilla and beat on high with electric mixer for a long time until fluffy. Scrape frosting away from bowl sides occasionally. (Long time = approximately 10 minutes. The frosting will look like a disaster for the first few minutes, but keep beating and it will transform.)
Serve the cupcakes by candlelight - they will look redder!
I'm a Southern girl with a severe allergy to Red 40 and have been searching for years for a good red velvet recipe. I'd heard that the recipes that incorporate beets tend to have a beet-y taste. Last summer, I boiled down beets for several hours to make a natural dye, and doubled the amount called for in the recipe. The cupcakes came out reddish brown, but nowhere near as bright red as ones died with artificial colors. I'll be excited to see how this plays out.
There's an excellent beet-based recipe on this blog!
http://bittersweetblog.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/seeing-red/
I'm hoping this works and we see pictures. I don't like red velvet cake because I can always taste the food coloring. I've always wondered why that didn't bother anyone else, but I'm hypersensitive to artificial sweeteners too, so maybe not everyone notices it?
Maybe this goes against the spirit of experiment, but if you're taking out the food coloring, why not just go whole hog, drop the red entirely, and call them Velvet Cupcakes?
They'd still be yummy and honestly, the fact that red velvet looks so red but doesn't taste like anything red has always been a little strange to me.
I'm with mandarinmarie. What's the big deal with the red colouring?
I don't think I've ever had red velvet cake, but if I were to make it, I'd probably simply omit the colouring.
I make my red velvet with roasted and pureed beets. I won't touch the other stuff! My recipe here:
http://www.areyoumyghost.com/2009/07/red-velvet-redux.html
The beet cakes don't taste like beets. They are light and sweet, and because I grated the beets instead of pureeing, everyone who's eaten my recipe thinks it is that boxed confetti cake or something, but no one has guessed beets.
I was raised on natural food. I remember once on my sister's birthday my mom made her a cake that was to be frosted pink. She added beet juice to vanilla frosting.. and it turned very pink!
my husband is VERY anti-food coloring, unless it is the indian colors that are all natural.
http://www.mightyfoods.com/archives/2007/01/new_product_all_natural_food_c.html
I don't know about using the following idea for cupcakes - there the colouring agent has to be heated, plus it contains cocoa which has to be overpowered :) but there are several things that can be used for marzipan/sugar icing.
1. Reed beet for red/pink
2. Raspberry for pink
3. Aronia/black chokeberry/redfruit for lilac/pink
4. Macha powder for green
5. Spinach for green
6. Saffran for yellow
7. Carrots for yellow/orange
8. Cocoa for brown
9. Active charocal pills for gray/black
The results (mixed into and the last picture as painted onto) can be seen here http://aniitram.blogspot.com/2010/04/monusalt-varviline-martsipan.html