Raccoon and Lobster

And…we’re done. The final bundt was an adaptation of Kiss My Bundt’s Red Velvet Bundt, as published in the LA Times and found via The Food Librarian’s epic Thirty Days of Bundt.

As I am apparently in a storytelling mood, here are a few random factoids before we get to the recipe.

Numero uno: I am, and always will be, against food coloring for the sake of food coloring. So, no dye.

Item II: It used to be the case that Devil’s Food Cake and Red Velvet were the same thing. The names used to reflect the ginger color that resulted from a reaction between (alkalized) cocoa powder and acidic buttermilk. Then at some point they diverged and Devil’s Food Cake meant chocolate cake and Red Velvet was cake with red food coloring and eventually there was not so much chocolate in the Red Velvet cake, and plenty of red dye instead.

C) There is no C.

Four. Funny story about Dutch processed cocoa, aka alkalized cocoa. When I made my first batch of Red-Headed Stepchild Velvet Cupcakes, I used non-alkalized fancy cocoa powder, because The Boyfriend is a chocolate snob. When I offered him a warm cupcake fresh out of the oven, he said “It’s good,  I can still taste the baking powder.” Well, you can clearly see from the recipe that there is no baking powder, so I retorted hotly that in the course of running errands that day, I had run out of time to travel to the nega dimension to buy nega baking powder to counteract the complete absence of baking powder. Later, I realized he was tasting the tang of buttermilk (which, by the way, tastes nothing like baking powder) and I switched to alkalized cocoa. Thus ended his Monday-morning backseat guessing of the cupcakes.

Extra Chocolatey Not-Red Velvet Bundt Cake adapted from Kiss My Bundt recipe

I upped the cocoa powder in this recipe quite a bit and ended up with a rich chocolate cake. You can adjust back down to one tablespoon of cocoa for the original recipe or split the difference and go with two.

1¼ cups vegetable oil
1 cup buttermilk
2 eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2½ cups flour (I used 11.5 oz)
1¾ cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon fine salt
3 tablespoons high-fat cocoa powder (I used Valrhona)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and set aside 10 cup bundt pan. Combine oil, buttermilk, eggs, vinegar, and vanilla and beat well. In a separate bowl, whisk together remaining ingredients. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined. Pour into bundt pan and bake until a tester comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Cool in pan for 10 minutes before inverting. Let cool at least one hour before frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 ounces cream cheese, softened
4 ounces unsalted butter, softened
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1½ cups powdered sugar, sifted

Beat the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla until well combined. Gradually add the powdered sugar and beat until well combined and frosting is light and fluffy. Apply frosting. Let me know if you figure out how to do this on a bundt shape without looking like a hot mess.