red velvet cake!

my dad is into cakes - he likes making them and eating them and giving them as presents when invited to other people's homes. he was on a lemon cake kick, but, when i was home, he wanted to make a never-before-attempted red velvet cake. because my step-mom had one and liked it, and he likes to make her happy, which is nice.

i was his sous chef. as sous chef, i can't tell you what was in the cake, i just followed directions. but, i did get to help operate the glorious kitchen aid. oooh.

and i assisted in the dying of the batter, which is what makes it red. sorry to reveal the big mystery, folks. p.s. that is my dad's hand, not mine.

oooh - red batter!

red batter in a springform pan pre-oven!

and here they are - ready for frosting!

and then we frosted it...three days later.

this is because of what might be referred to as 'the frosting debacle.' see, what my dad wanted was to make frosting. buttercream frosting. however, when we consulted the holy cooking bible aka the joy of cooking, we found that we couldn't even understand the instructions for real french buttercream frosting, let alone make the stuff. i recall that it involved heating twice to different temps, double-boilers going in a different part of the oven top, and beating in butter one tablespoon at a time...and there were 24 tablespoons.

instead, it got late, we went to bed, and circumstances were such that we didn't do anything with the cake for three days. instead, i broke down and, by request, bought a duncan hines container of buttercream frosting. only took two seconds!

i must also point out that, when my dad frosted the cake, he did not wait to hear any of my tips, such as frosting the crumb layer first. and so....it turned out to be one big crumb layer. we decided it looked pretty, and all agreed that three days stuck to the bottom piece of a springform pan definitely induced more crumbs than normal.

it was still good, in case anyone was wondering.