Red Velvet Layer Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

This red velvet cake recipe is one of my favorites to make because it’s so easy to whip up and bakes into decadent and tender layers .

Now, If you’ve ever tried red velvet cake you’ve probably followed up with the question, “What flavor is this?!” Red velvet cake is a colored butter cake gently infused with a bit of cocoa powder and a hint of tanginess from a combination of buttermilk and vinegar, lemon juice or cream of tartar. Paired with a perfectly smooth and slightly tart cream cheese frosting, this dessert is a guaranteed crowd pleaser!

But wait – theres more! This recipe also includes a small amount of coconut extract – the delicate sweetness plays beautifully with the subtle chocolate flavor translating to a uniquely delicious red velvet cake!

tips for success

• Cream butter and sugar. Creaming your butter and sugar properly helps to incorporate air into the cake batter for soft, fluffy layers. Start with soft, room temperature butter for best results. Perfectly creamed butter and sugar will be pale yellow (not white) and fluffy. Be careful not to over cream as this can result in your cake rising to quickly before falling and causing a heavy, almost soggy cake.
• Add flavorings at the creaming stage. Simply put, fat carries flavor – to get the most out of your extracts add them at the creaming stage!
• Mix ingredients only enough to combine. Over-mixing your batter can cause several undesirable results in your final cake including dense, tough layers and sunken cake layers. To avoid these mistakes I mix only to incorporate – stopping once the yolks are broken after adding eggs and once there are no clear lumps of flour after adding dry ingredients
• Gently fold cream cheese into whipped cream. Cream cheese can become watery if over-worked when making the frosting so to avoid this, after beating cream cheese with sugar, gently fold into cold whipped cream for a frosting that will hold its shape.
• Make sure the gelatin is just right. We use gelatin to help stabilize our cream cheese frosting and avoid a soupy mess as mentioned above however, if the gelatin is too cool when added it can result in clumps of gelatin in our frosting. Too hot and it affects the cream’s ability to whip. We want it like baby food – palatably warm where it feels comfortable on the back of our hand
• When in doubt, underwhip. Ok, this only goes for the whipping stage before adding the gelatin. Our aim for this stage is soft peaks – this happens when the peak at the end of a whisk doesn’t hold its shape and easily flops over. This is important because we want the mixture to still be slightly fluid where the gelatin can seamlessly blend in. If too much air is already incorporated (stiff peaks) this causes the gelatin to cool more quickly in those air pockets resulting in gelatin clumps.
• Refrigerate or freeze your bowl before whipping heavy cream. Cold cream will aerate much more easily and gain more volume so by using a cold bowl you’re able to keep the cream cold until it reaches stiff peaks.