Red Velvet Cake

After many requests from friends, I finally made my first attempt at Red Velvet Cake.  I intended to make the Dark Chocolate Red Velvet Cake from the All Cakes Considered book by Melissa Gray, but after reading some negative reviews (e.g., http://www.annarbor.com/entertainment/food-drink/red-velvet-cake/ ) and noticing that the ACC recipe used much more butter and sugar and many more eggs than any other recipe I could find, I decided to do one of my “recipe-mergers” where I combine the ingredients and techniques from several recipes into one that makes sense to me.  Links to the three recipes I ended up combining are at the end.  The only thing I retained from the All Cakes Considered version was using sour cream instead of buttermilk (because I had already bought sour cream for the cake and didn’t want to waste it).  You can find both the cake and frosting recipes here.

[Yes, I know it is not the blood-red cake some of you are expecting.  For that, you need to reduce/leave out the chocolate/cocoa.  A full explanation of the cocoa/food coloring balance is contained in the recipe.]

Enjoy!