I got my second "official" cake order last night, for this Friday!  It's a surprise 30th birthday. Cake requested, Red Velvet.  I'm from the South. We invented it and every Southern Lady wants to perfect it.  So, I was scratching my head today, trying to figure out how to make this red velvet stand up and shout. 

My dear friend and cake tester, Monica says my chocolate cake is her favorite and the best she's ever tasted. *blush*  My sister in-law and mother-in-law both agree and actually don't care for cake, unless it's my chocolate. Then they hide it from everyone else and it just gets ugly because neither will share.  I thought I'd try to tweak this recipe into red velvet.  I'm waiting on the results but the recipe looks like this:

2 cups of flour
1 3/4 cups of sugar
3/4 tsp of salt
3 tbls of very good cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp REAL vanilla
2 jumbo eggs
1 cup of veg oil
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup strong black coffee, hot
1 tsp white vinegar
1/2 tsp xmas red food gel

I mixed my dry ingredients and mixed all my wet in a separate bowl, adding coffee after I mixed the eggs. I added the gel to a tiny bit of water to smooth the lumps. Then added the red coloring to the wet.  Combined and added to the dry.  It's baking now at 325 in a sheet pan.  I'm doing a suitcase cake and will stack three of these.  I'm hoping the color will brighten and mellow. I have no idea how long to bake it.

I'm going to make my fondant now.  I'll post pictures of the final product.