My Eating Habit: I Love Every Layer of this Red Velvet

I made a 3 layer red velvet cake for my sweet Yoojin's bridal shower last week!

I used the recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction - Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. It was a relatively easy recipe to follow and the cake did come out moist and yummy as she claims it! I did have to change a couple things to fit what I had in my pantry and my vision for the cake. So here's what I did differently:

1. Instead of cake flour, I used all purpose flour. Yes, I know, the recipe strongly urges you to use cake flour. However, I've made the mistake of buying cake flour before and I had absolutely no use for it after the one recipe that called for it. It ended up going to waste. Therefore, I chose to use substitution in my red velvet cake - 2 and 2/3 cups all purpose flour + 1/3 cup cornstarch in lieu of 3 cups cake flour. Just make sure everything is sifted if you choose to use this substitution!

2. The recipe calls for natural unsweetened cocoa powder. Surprisingly, I don't have that in my pantry and instead, I have dutch process cocoa powder. I didn't even think twice and opted for that. It wasn't until this blog post that I researched the difference and understood how it might affect a baked good's leaven if I don't use what the recipe called for. Ultimately, if a recipe calls for baking soda, use natural and if a recipe calls for baking powder, use dutch. It didn't affect the taste that much, but I was worried it was too thin when I took it out of the oven. Anyways, if you're interested in the food science detail, here's the link to the site I read up on.

3. The recipe calls for 3 Tablespoons of food coloring but I only used 2 Tablespoons because that's all I had left.. I think it turned out fine!

4. The recipe makes about 6 and 3/4 cups of batter. How do I know? I had to painstakingly scoop one cup at a time into a new bowl so I know how to split it up for my 3 layer cake! I hope this is helpful information for you because every time I bake a layer cake, I struggle with knowing how much to put into the cake pan evenly.

5. I used roughly 3 cups instead of 4 cups of confectioners' sugar for the frosting. I don't think there's an easy way to know if your frosting is at its perfect texture or not. It mostly comes from practices and experiences. One trick I did learn is to touch your frosting lightly using your index finger and if the frosting is not sticking to your finger, you need to soften it by adding some liquid. If it's too soft and sticking too much to your finger, you need to add confectioners' sugar to create a thicker texture. In this case. 3 cups of confectioners' sugar worked for me!

One more thing I've learned from this process is to be more generous when it comes to frosting. I was so conservative with the in between layer frosting that you could barely see and taste it. Nonetheless, the cake completed the dessert table and was very much loved by many of the guests, including the soon-to-be bride herself! She even broke her Keto diet just so she can eat it! Haha.