I guess this qualifies as a perfectly ridiculous question, but what exactly is red velvet cake? What does it taste like? What makes it red? I was curious what the flavor was, this is a new thing to me.

So funny !!! I was talking about a Red Velvet cake just today with a colleague who didn't know either ! So don't feel bad.

Its a chocolate cake with red food coloring. It's made with buttermilk which gives it a richer flavor. A very pretty cake, usually with cream cheese frosting.

To me it tastes like a light chocolate cake, not what you think of when you think "chocolate cake". It is very good with the cream cheese icing which is weird because I would never think to put cream cheese icing on a traditional chocolate cake!

Interesting! It sounds delicious! I'll have to try this for myself--and thanks for the cream cheese icing tip!

The icing usually has chopped pecans too! mmmmm
Cream Cheese icing is great on vanilla & chocolate cake!

To me it is just like a light chocolate cake, with red food coloring added. Its very good, if you don't want anything too rich!

I decided to google it though, and thought everyone would find this interesting!

What is Red Velvet cake? Few of the usual sources even mention it. (Beard, however, does give a recipe in American Cookery, which calls for red food coloring and cocoa.) Webster's New World Dictionary of Culinary Arts describes it as a four-layer American Christmas cake. That didn't sound right to us, so we dug deeper. An amateur culinary historian friend of ours suggested the cake was originally made from beets and cocoa at a time when chocolate was dear. Cocoa, incidentally, accounts for the cake's velvety texture. Several other sources describe red velvet cake as a traditional Southern specialty. We next called Jennifer Appel, who serves a delicious version at Magnolia Bakery in New York City's Greenwich Village. People think it's southern, she told us, but it actually originated in the 1950s in the heart of Manhattan -- at Oscar's at the Waldorf -- and from there traveled South. Joe Verde, the current chef at Oscar's, confirmed the story, but says when he researched the cake's history in the Waldorf archives a few years ago, he couldn't find a single mention of it. "Still, for some reason it's attributed to us, so we take credit for it," he laughed. The cake's popularity faded in the '70s when red dye No. 2 was linked to cancer. Today, Oscar's serves an updated version, which is made from bittersweet chocolate ganache and is dusted with cranberry powder

I think it tastes a lot like chocolate. I just made red velvet cake for an armadillo groom's cake. I ended up using buttercream icing for decorating purposes....and everyone still liked it!