Help! Question about Bakerella's Red Velvet Recipe

Your cake is safe to eat.

It will NOT stain the teeth--because you baked the colour with the batter.  It's only icings and other raw foods that will transfer the gel colour to teeth and skin.

And I haven't checked--but those recipes that call for 2 ounces of red colour are usually referring to the wimpy stuff from the grocery store.  Using professional gel means using 1 tablespoon gel and 3 tablespoons water in place of 2 ounces colour.

OK so I found the Bakerella red velvet blog.  In her responses to questions she does say that she buys the 1-ounce bottles from the grocery store and pops off the dropper tops.

When you use gel, you have to add the extra water.    

I don't think you should hesitate to serve this to kids that are 5 or older. The current red food colours have been investigated pretty thoroughly. The tests from 40 years ago that had negative results involved high doses of ingredients that are just not available anymore.

Now whether the kids like it is another matter...you might discover that they are amused for 15 seconds but that they never ask for this cake again.  I used to dish ice cream cones, and we had the red-blue-black licorice flavours for those rugrats that had to scandalize their elders who paid for the cones.  Same thing..not too many kids took seconds. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Annabakescakes 


I dished ice cream for a little while, too and it did seem the kids gravitated toward the bright colors, superman, and blue moo cookie dough...

I asked one kid whether he liked the flavour, and he hummed and hawed, so I asked if he liked the colour.  He said he liked the way it turned his tongue blue.

I have come to consider blue tongues and blue hair to be preferable forms of rebellion.  I used to have neighbours that would comment on the local outbreaks of green or purple streaks, and I always said "better that they choose something so visible and innocent". Healthy children are always looking for ways to push the boundaries...asking for brightly coloured food is OK by me.

So OP can look forward to requests for rainbow cake and Rubiks cube cake.  Lots of info online.

You could probably just add the colour by eye after you have added the first half of the flour.  It might only take 1 teaspoon of that super red to look right.

Eaton's used to make red velvet cake that was a fairly light shade of red, with the red-red paste available at the time. I wish I could give you a reliable equivalent but it was surely not nearly as deep as the red in the Bakerella blog's photo, it was about as deep as a half-ripened winter tomato. It didn't stain the teeth.