Why is Red Velvet Cake red? miLam exposes the decades-old conspiracy between natural cocoa producers, the Waldorf-Astoria, beet farmers, and the FDA.

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Why Is It Red?

Red Velvet Cake

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This Red Velvet Cake Is To Die For!

Red food coloring is the most commonly used dye in the U.S.^[1] It’s synthetically derived from petroleum. Most of the dye you ingest is excreted from your body. The FDA says it’s harmless. But if food dyes are really safe, how do you explain this:

Backstory

Natural cocoa powder’s color has a reddish undertone. Certain conditions cause this undertone to become more apparent.

This is “…due to the chemical reaction of acid in unsweetened bar chocolate and natural (non-alkalized) cocoa powder in conjunction with an acidic liquid (generally buttermilk or sour milk) with an alkali (baking soda), which reveals the red anthocyanin, a water-soluble vacuolar pigment.”^[2]

That chemical reaction won’t turn your cake this kind of red:

Only a food dye will do that. Natural cocoa + acidic liquid + baking soda will produce a medium brown cake with a reddish tint. Like this:

Damn, that cake looks delicious. But back to business: “this natural tinting may have been the source for the name ‘red velvet’ as well as ‘Devil’s food’ and similar names for chocolate cakes.”^[3]

The first step toward today’s vibrant Red Velvet occurred when bakers began to enhance their Devil’s Food cakes with a small amount of food coloring and/or beets (or a beet derivative). In time, with notable layovers at the Waldorf-Astoria and the Adams Extract & Spice Company, we arrive at today’s Red Velvet, which is passionately red due to a shockingly large amount of food coloring.

Red № 40

The recipe for the “Red Velvet Cake” pictured above calls for six Tbs of food coloring. That’s three ounces. Sound like a lot to you? In many states, it’s enough to imply intent to deliver. It hit me when I realized that the tiny plastic baggies bottles my dealer keeps in his I have in my cupboard contain only a quarter-ounce when they’re full. These are the normal bottles you buy at the store to color Easter Eggs. You’d need twelve bottles to produce three ounces! I don’t use a lot of food coloring, so I don’t know if I should be alarmed by having to use that much at once. It’s powerful. The quarter-ounce bottle I’ve been using to dye eggs in my house for, I don’t know, generations, is still practically full. If I’m going to eat twelve bottles, I want to know what the hell is in this stuff. I swear to you that I’m not one of “those” people; I’m just curious.

The FDA says it’s safe. Others disagree. I’m not wandering into that quagmire.

My concern is this: no one is saying it’s good for you. There’s a big difference between making decisions based on “this choice will benefit me” as opposed to “this choice will not kill me.” Obviously, I didn’t have that frame of mind this morning, when I ate three doughnuts. Or this afternoon, when I ate a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. So, why do I hesitate over the idea of squirting a full bottle of food coloring into a single slice of cake? Probably because I perceive it as artificial. It triggers the same response in me that I get when I see this:

My Responses:

1. Holy Shit!
2. That doesn’t look like food.
3. Woah, I thought those flashbacks stopped years ago.
4. I know it won’t taste the way it looks.
5. (Let’s not talk about how I just implied that Quarter Pounders are somehow natural. I love them. I want to keep eating them, and I can only do it under a heavy fog of ignorance.)

I mean, take a look at this guy, for Christ’s sake:

When you finally get him out of this outfit (if you can), wouldn’t you be deflated to find out that he’s a computer programmer for an accounting firm in Provo? I mean, don’t you want him to be a heavily tattooed acrobat who recently had a near-death experience while performing a high-wire act for Cirque de Soleil, whom you met at an underground after-hours club in Milan? The moral of the story: if you’re going to look this wild, you better taste pretty spicy. And I mean you, Tie Dye Cake. And you, Red Velvet.

In light of this, let’s re-examine this Tie Dye Cake. Its looks and taste couldn’t be further apart. It’s simply a vanilla box cake that’s gone supernova with color. It looks so intriguing, but when it opens its mouth, it has nothing to say. So my question is, why would you go to such lengths to make this cake look so interesting, and do nothing whatsoever in terms of making it taste interesting? I say! Move to one side or the other: either this cake should taste like Skittles, or else it should look like the vanilla cake that it is.

Same goes for the Red Velvets and all their lesser-known other-color velvets.

What’s the Point?

If you are going to eat twelve bottles of food coloring, you also have to ask yourself what the point is. Why dye your chocolate cake an unnatural shade of red? There are decades of research supporting the idea that foods taste different when you change their color. Still, how much food coloring are you willing to eat to achieve this perceptive change?

The Red Velvets:

The Lesser-Known Other-Color Velvets:

Notes:

Coming to a Food Blog Near You:

Featured Image Cred: Gimme Some Oven

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