A LOVELY MYTH

Behold, the romanticized Red Velvet cake.

It pops visually with the bright red, fluffy insides. It's super-rich with that cream cheese frosting. And it's everywhere now — in cupcakes at discount stores, in cake mixes at the grocery store and on dessert menus in local restaurants.

Plus, it has such a sweet history.

The story goes that cocoa rationing during World War II led creative chefs at New York's Waldorf Astoria hotel to use beets to make a bright red alternative. One woman loved the cake so much, she asked for the recipe. The hotel gave it to her but then charged her $100. Outraged, she mailed the recipe to everyone she knew, thus spreading Red Velvet — then called Waldorf Astoria Cake — across the country and into kitchens everywhere.

It's a wonderful story. Too bad it's all a bunch of hooey.

“I'm smelling a big rat,” said Nancie McDermott, a North Carolina chef and cookbook author.

McDermott hired historians to research Red Velvet cake when she included a recipe for it in her 2007 book “Southern Cakes: Sweet, Irresistible Recipes for Everyday Celebrations.” She had heard the myths and always assumed they were pure fiction. Her historians confirmed it.

The oldest recipe they found for the cake dated to the late 1950s. Their research showed it had never been on the Waldorf Astoria menu. Those original recipes dated to times when cocoa wasn't rationed. They even featured the chocolatey ingredient, though in limited quantities. And none of the recipes included beets.

McDermott has deducted that some modern, high-end pastry chefs have adapted the recipe to include beets as a natural alternative to food coloring. And Red Velvet cakes certainly need food coloring, with some recipes calling for as much as two bottles of it.

“Red Velvet cake is surrounded in urban legend,” she said. “I think romance just took over and led to all these stories. Cakes tend to do that.”

As best as she can tell, the recipe probably came from a newspaper food writer, touting a new idea for a pretty cake. It certainly fits. Red Velvet is kitschy, quirky and creative — all staples of 1950s baking.

While some foodies frown on the 1950s, McDermott never would.

“I'm a child of that time,” she said. “I embrace my inner tacky '50s.”

And she's certainly embraced Red Velvet cake — though a different version than the one so popular today.

Most Red Velvet cakes sold now feature cream cheese frosting. It's rich. It's creamy. It's wonderful.

But it's not traditional.

Original Red Velvet cakes featured a frosting McDermott calls vanilla fudge. It starts with a flour and milk paste that's eventually combined with whipped butter and sugar. The result is a sweet, fudgy frosting that's not as over-the-top as cream cheese frosting.

Which is better? Well, cake makers have very strong opinions on that matter.

Omahan Karen Lamke has been using the same recipe for what she calls Waldorf Astoria cake for 35 years. It calls for the traditional, pasty frosting. She makes it every year for Christmas dinner. Her three sons love it.

“My family would have fits if I didn't make it with the original frosting,” Lamke said.

She'd have fits, too. She's never eaten Red Velvet cake with cream cheese frosting.

“I don't even want to try it,” she said. “Cream cheese frosting goes on carrot cake.”

Ron Popp would beg to differ. The owner of and baker at Omaha's WheatFields makes a decadent Red Velvet version that's slathered in cream cheese frosting. He got the recipe from a longtime customer, who scored the recipe on a tour of the Waldorf Astoria hotel. (The fact the hotel hands out a recipe featuring cream cheese frosting further debunks the myth that it's the originator of Red Velvet Cake, in McDermott's eyes.)

Red Velvet is a hot seller at WheatFields, especially around the holidays and Valentine's Day, Popp said. But Popp's people make it only as a special order because it doesn't have much of a shelf life.

Whenever his bakers hand the cake over to customers, they usually hear oohs and ahhs.

“It's a very visual cake, and there's definitely a novelty element to it,” Popp said. “Any time people see it, they want it. Red really sells.”

And Red Velvet items have been selling well. Both McDermott and Popp have noticed it locally and nationally.

The cake has had a strong Southern following since the 1950s. When some studies in the 1970s linked red food coloring to cancer, that didn't help the cake's popularity much, as usual recipes call for one or two bottles of food coloring. The 1989 film “Steel Magnolias” featured a Red Velvet cake, which helped boost its appeal. Singer Jessica Simpson chose an elaborate Red Velvet cake for her 2002 wedding to Nick Lachey, further glamorizing the treat.

“It went Hollywood,” McDermott said. “And why not? It's fabulous.”

Contact the writer:

444-1220, dane.stickney@owh.com

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