Red Velvet Cake (Dye Free!)

I love Red Velvet Cake for the holidays.  I don’t love the obscene amount of red dye, though it is beautiful.  After researching vegetable dyes, I was not thrilled with the light pink color that natural, store bought dyes gave.  This is a Red Velvet Cake, not a Pink Velvet Cake.

This cake starts like all good cakes: with butter.

Creaming the butter, oil, and sugar.

Inspired by Carrot Cake, I wondered if adding beets to the cake could give a deeper shade of red, but I didn’t want it to taste like it had beets in it.

Pureeing the beets gave a smooth consistency, but leaving them slightly minced gave the reddest color. The beets seem to give it a fabulous moistness, which my Grandma Helen achieved by using 2 cups of vegetable oil in this cake (!!!).  In that sense, perhaps this cake is a slightly lighter version??

Add the puree to the creamed butter/sugar mixture, plus the beet juice.

OMG the cocoa.  It makes it a richer red color.

Separate into two pans:

Mmmmm.  Freshly baked.

This gorgeous cake plate is milk glass, which is perfect to offset the red cake and creamy white frosting.

Mmmmm.

This cake recipe could easily be made gluten free, by swapping the small amount of white flour for all coconut flour, too.

[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:1]

 

xoxo

 

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