Red velvet cake (the legend)

1 servings

Ingredients

Quantity Ingredient
½ cup Shortening
1½ cup White sugar
2 Eggs
2 tablespoons Cocoa
¼ cup Red food colouring
1 teaspoon Salt
2½ cup Cake flour
1 cup Buttermilk
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1 teaspoon Baking soda
1 teaspoon Vinegar

Directions

This Red Velvet cake recipe was given away in Winnipeg in protest against the charging for it in the Restaurant. My Mother remembered much more of the story than I did. Seems that a couple of Winnipegers were vacationing in the southern U.S.A. & were served this wonderful cake. They asked if they might have the recipe & were told they could. When they went to pay for the meal they found a charge of $200.00 had been added on to the normal charge. This was for the recipe. When they got home they turned it over to the Women's Institute who sold copies for $¼ to all comers. When the $200.00 had been recovered they had it published in the Winnipeg Free press and the Hudson's bay store here also started to serve it in their paddle wheel room. A copy of the recipe came with each serving! She has since lost the recipe for the icing but the cake recipe she still had. This is a copy of the ORIGINAL recipe as printed in the paper but the method is hers as she never bothered saving that part of the article. BTW DON'T use any of the modern food colourings in this amount. They are mineral based & in this quantity aren't good for you. If you can get cocheneal type red colouring go ahead. Otherwise substitute water or something else for the colouring.

Mix all dry ingredients together except the soda. Mix the soda with the vinegar & add to the wet ingredients. Mix wet & dry together & bake in two 9" round pans about ½ hr. ( normal cake temp ) Subst.

water or wine for the red colouring.

This recipe came from the Winnipeg Free Press. The date isn't known exactly but I was just a young lad so it would be about 35 years ago.

Tom Story 10-14-91 << The Bridgeport PCBoard BBS >> Another story: The Red Velvet cake recipe was supposed to have been sold by the Waldorf-Astoria in NYC to some unsuspecting diner; the price was also $250, and the time was DECADES ago, when $250 was real money. But it turns out that the Waldorf never even served red velvet cake in their restaurant! Jan Harald Brunvand wrote about this particular urban legend as early as 1968, and he said that it was at least a decade old then.

Michael Loo Cooking Echo 7/3/94 Recipe By :

From: Marjorie Scofield Date: 05-27-95 (159) Fido: Cooking

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