Who doesn’t like a good red velvet cake? Make them mini cute cakes and it’ll for sure be a hit among everyone. The light and moist layers of red velvet cake that melts in your mouth with this luscious cream cheese icing will definitely have everyone asking for seconds!
Science Behind Red Velvet Cakes
The science behind red velvet cake lies in the ingredients and their interactions during the baking process.
- Cocoa powder: Red velvet cake contains a small amount of cocoa powder which gives it a slight chocolate flavor. Cocoa powder also contributes to the cake’s reddish-brown color.
- Vinegar and Buttermilk: The acidity in vinegar and buttermilk reacts with baking soda to create carbon dioxide, which helps the cake rise and become light and fluffy.
- Baking soda: Baking soda is an alkaline ingredient that reacts with acidic ingredients such as vinegar and buttermilk to create carbon dioxide bubbles, which make the cake rise.
- Red food coloring: Red velvet cake gets its distinctive red color from food coloring. Originally, the cake’s red color was due to a chemical reaction between the cocoa powder and the acidic ingredients, but modern recipes use food coloring instead.
- Cream Cheese Frosting: Cream cheese frosting is a traditional frosting for red velvet cake. The tanginess of the cream cheese complements the slight chocolate flavor of the cake.
Overall, the combination of these ingredients creates a unique flavor and texture that sets red velvet cake apart from other cakes.
How is this healthier?
Firstly, to “healthify” this recipe, the sugar content was lowered in both the cake and the icing. Additionally, for the icing, regular cream cheese was replaced with light cream cheese — a substitute with less fat and higher content which works well for this recipe. The key player here though, is the substitution of unsweetened applesauce for the large and butter typically used in red velvet cakes. Applesauce acts similar to fat by keeping the wet ingredients from mixing with the protein of the flour, preventing a dense rubbery cake. By capturing gasses released while baking, it slows down gluten formation and keeps the light fluffy texture of a cake. It as well adds some sweetness to the cake from the natural sugars allowing for a lower refined sugar content. And lastly, the many nutrients in apples and applesauce are transferred to the cake, such as fiber — which would be missing if fully butter/oil was used —- making this the perfect guilt free treat!
Why use vinegar?
You may think, “wait what? Vinegar? In cake?”. Why are we putting this sour liquid into our sweet cake? For several reasons: first being a rising agent. The acidic nature of vinegar reacts with the baking soda and releases carbon dioxide as a result of the chemical reaction — assisting in the rising of the cake.
Healthy Red Velvet Mini Cakes
Ingredients
Cake
- 1 ½ cup AP flour 180g
- 1 ½ tablespoon cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoons salt
- ¾ cups sugar
- ¾ cups buttermilk room temperature
- 1 large egg room temperature
- ¼ cups applesauce
- ¼ cups oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon vinegar*
- Several drops of red food colouring gel
- ½ cups hot water
Icing
- 4 ounces light cream cheese ½ block
- 1 ½ cup heavy cream
- ½ cups powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
For the cake
- Preheat your oven to 350 F and line a 9×12 inch baking pan with parchment paper.
- In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar using a whisk.
- In a separate bowl combine the buttermilk, egg, applesauce, oil, vanilla, and vinegar until fully (or almost fully) mixed.
- Combine the wet mixture with the dry and incorporate using a spatula. Using fully mixed, add enough red food colouring until the batter is red. Finally, slowly pour in the hot water while mixing the batter until the batter is smooth and fully combined.
- Pour the batter onto the pre lined pan and bake on the bottom rack for approximately 12 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
For the icing
- In a stand mixer, whip the cream cheese, vanilla, and powdered sugar on high for 1-2 minutes. Gradually add the heavy cream until the icing doubles in size and forms stiff peaks.
