Red velvet recipe #8402445, red velvet cake with raspberry cream cheese icing. Made as a large double-layered cake for my mum for her birthday (happy birthday!) but some leftover batter got made into cupcakes as seen in the photo.

I’ve been wanting to make a raspberry red velvet cake for ages, just because apparently that’s one of the more common red velvet permutations in the wider world. Well, I guess in the U.S. maybe, since red velvet is pretty uncommon in general here in Australia… although they’re never going to convince anyone of red velvet’s worth if they don’t try to sell it convincingly.

For example, at the lovely Poppy Cakes a while back, I overheard a rather loud woman shout at the baker “WHAT FLAVOUR IS RED VELVET?” while gesticulating at some red velvet cupcakes, and he replied with “Well… umm… it’s kind of a mix of vanilla and cocoa…” and of course, Rather Loud Woman immediately ordered a chocolate cupcake with chocolate icing.

The baker didn’t sell the mystique, the ineffable, transcendental flavour of red velvet that dares the English language (and probably all other languages ever) to even attempt to describe it. The look on people’s faces when they try red velvet for the first time is remarkable because it’s the look of realisation that language, in this moment, is useless to them.

So if the question is:
What flavour is red velvet?

Then the answer is:
You wish you knew what flavour red velvet is! It’s the flavour that will have you yelling “Where have you been all my life?” in a wounded, accusatory tone after you first try it! Your life is all the poorer for not having tried it, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, oh just try it already and stop wasting away in pathetic ignorance of its greatness of which you are quite possibly not worthy. Now is your chance to enlighten yourself.

Then either the person will try red velvet, or they will flee. What am I, a customer service representative?

You know the rigmarole with the standard red velvet recipe. And the icing?

Raspberry cream cheese icing
500g cream cheese, at room temperature
100g unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup icing sugar, sifted
1 tsp vanilla paste
400g frozen raspberries

Put the frozen raspberries in a saucepan and cook them over medium-low heat until they reduce down to a thick liquid. Remove from the heat and leave to cool slightly. (This works best with frozen raspberries, which I only used because I didn’t feel that the fresh raspberries were worth $9 a punnet, but you could use fresh raspberries in a similar way.)

Beat the cream cheese and butter together in the bowl of an electric mixer with a paddle attachment until well combined. Add the vanilla and beat again, then the icing sugar and beat again. Add the slightly cooled raspberries and beat until well combined, then ice your red velvet cake/s.