Soft Red Velvet Cake

Note 1. You can use cake flour in place of the all-purpose flour and cornstarch in this recipe (293 g total required).

Note 2. Natural cocoa powder will help prevent your batter from becoming too dark, allowing a brighter red color to shine through. It is also more acidic than Dutch-processed cocoa powder, lighter in color, and has a slightly sharper, more chocolatey flavor. It works particularly well alongside the buttermilk and vinegar in this recipe, which are also acidic ingredients.

Note 3. I recommend using unsalted butter in my baking recipes because it allows you to control the amount of salt. I know salted butter is more commonly used in some countries, including New Zealand, so if that’s what you have on hand, you can still use it! Just reduce the salt to ¼ teaspoon for this recipe.

Note 4. If you're doing a lot of additional piping like I did with my red velvet cake, then make 1.5x my cream cheese frosting recipe to ensure you have enough frosting. Otherwise, 1 batch will be enough.

Note 5. If using a convection oven with a fan function, bake at 320°F (160°C), as the fan circulates hot air and causes food to bake faster. Please note that in the recipe video, I use the fan function, so the temperature shown in the video refers to a fan oven. I’ve amended the recipe card to give the temperature for a conventional oven, as most readers of my blog use convection ovens.

Note 6. If using a stand mixer, use the paddle attachment for the initial mixing, but continue to do the final step by hand as stated in the recipe.

Note 7. Gently folding in the ingredients prevents too much gluten from forming, resulting in a softer cake. Only mix until the streaks of flour have disappeared and the batter is uniform.

Note 8. Opening the oven door too early and allowing cold air to rush into the oven can cause cakes to collapse if the structure hasn't set yet. If your oven runs hot and you want to check your cake layers earlier than the stated baking time, allow at least ¾ of the baking time to pass before checking them.

Note 9. The cream cheese frosting can be on the slightly softer side when it's first made, so allowing it to firm up in the fridge will make the cake easier and neater to slice and serve. We don't want the cake to be cold though, so if you're leaving the cake in the fridge for over an hour, then bring it out of the fridge about an hour or so before serving so the cake has time to soften up. If you cut into the cake and it's still cold, just let it come to room temperature before eating (otherwise the texture will be more firm than soft).

Note 10. This recipe is designed to be divided between two 8-inch cake pans. I don’t recommend putting all of the batter into one 8-inch pan, as this is a soft cake and too much batter in one pan can cause the center to sink as it bakes. It can also cause the edges to overbake before the center is fully cooked.

Note 11: You may notice some cup and tablespoon measurements differ slightly from the original recipe that I posted in 2022. I’ve updated these to use standard US measurements, but the gram measurements have not changed, so the recipe itself has not changed. I recommend using the gram measurements whenever possible for the most accurate results. For more details about these updates, see the blog post above.

Ingredients

Red Velvet Cake

Cream Cheese Buttercream

Instructions

Video

Notes

Nutrition